50 Shades of Celibacy
by erosbittersweet
Summary: Anastasia Steele, tiring of constant submission after five years with Christian Grey, finds herself lured into erotic conversations with another man: the shy and virginal tech support guy. A 50 Shades Parody.
1. Prologue

**50 shades of Celibacy**

 _Anastasia Steele, tiring of constant submission after five years with Christian Grey, finds herself lured into erotic conversations with another man: the shy and virginal tech support guy._

 _This is a parody of the 50 Shades of Grey premise. You will probably enjoy it best if you are not a fan of the original series, yet you found yourself compulsively reading far too much of it before bailing._

Warning for the prologue:

 **NSFW. _This section of the story contains coarse language, graphic descriptions of sex and male anatomy, and misogynistic viewpoints_**

* * *

 **PROLOGUE**

"COPE!" He shouted, glaring at me across the desk. "You don't understand – this isn't fun for me. I don't enjoy this like you think I do. This is all just one giant fucking _cope_. If I can't ever have a woman, at least I can watch Chad fuck you."

"Then why do you do it, if it's not really what you want?" I asked the man, who was glaring at me furiously, his chest heaving with the effort these words had required from him. He pinched his lips together, and drew his brows together in hostility.

"I want to understand this," I continued, hoping his angry face would soften with my conciliation. "I think if I understood better, maybe I could help."

"I've been explaining this for hours, and you still don't get it," he said hollowly, slumping forward in his chair, bringing a hand to his unruly hair. "It's impossible."

"No," I protested. "Let me guess at why you do this."

He didn't respond. He hung his head in his hands and rested his elbows on his thighs, seemingly defeated.

"You do it because, rather than participating yourself, watching us gives you pleasure," I started, my voice low. His eyes flicked upwards and met mine: they were terrified, and his lips parted; he drew in a shocked breath. He was speechless.

"And more than that, your pleasure comes from…describing it, to yourself?" I continued. He swallowed, and shifted back in his chair, and still said nothing. I looked at him, and he flushed red, turning his face away from me, then blinked his eyes rapidly.

Despite his hatred for me and his constant rebuff of any kindness I'd shown him, I felt my own face redden with the power of this thought, which he'd, I supposed, tacitly accepted. I was sure that were I wrong, he would have screamed at my stupidity. I knew that silence wasn't proof of any kind, so I had to ask another question of him, if he would answer.

"Is this why you work for him?" I asked. "Do you have this job just so you can watch me, together, with Christian?"

"Yes," he burst out angrily, his words exploding through the room's silence. "It's _perfect_ , you and him. It's fucking perfect." He was quiet for a minute, collecting his thoughts, then he leaned forward, and something seemed to overtake him: his voice grew deeper, conspiratorial, and he stared at me boldly as he spoke.

"He whips you," he started, pausing and whetting his lips at the thought of this, "and your body bends like a reed in the morning breeze, and glows pink like the dawn when his punishment marks your skin. And then he takes you in his arms and kisses you, and when he enters you, you cry out in the same voice as when he strikes your flesh. Every touch he lavishes on your body is pure pleasure to you. It makes no difference how he violates you."

" Oh," I gasped, feeling desire wash down me like a river. I felt the place between my legs clench. I knew I should be screaming in horror, that I should be running out of this room in shock and anger, that this was something I never intended to have happen when I'd sympathetically reached out to the sad young man in IT who'd complained to me he was afraid he'd die alone.

"Tell me," I was saying to him, despite myself. "Tell me what else you see, when you watch us."

The papers which contained this tale of what he saw were lying on the desk in front of him, but he didn't need them: he closed his eyes, and leaned back, reciting from memory, as though he were speaking the words of a sacred text.

"I see Chad, as though he were a God, the beginning and the ending of all who carry the same name," he began. "Chad, six feet tall, muscles rippling as he strides towards you, his massive dick erect and bulging through his jeans, which hang off his hips, in that way, that way which passes human understanding. Truly, it is a mystery how they hang off those hips, which the poets could never penetrate, though they might spend a thousand words erecting an echo of his glorious tentpole. Pythagoras could not triangulate the angle of his hard cock against the fabric. Heisenberg would say that you could not measure both its size and the force of its thrust as though you could unwrap the mystery which surrounds his glorious phallus, which you would be no closer to knowing than before. Knowing its depth, knowing its breadth, knowing its power, is a Biblical knowing; it is carnal, and concealed within impenetrable darkness. His mighty rod is roped with heavy veins, like a monster who must be bound so he does not burst forth like the Leviathan from the sea."

"Jeez," I said, my breath hitching. "That's-wow. That's a lot of similes you've put in there."

"I have," he replied, nodding. "Not many people could understand these things the way I do. I grew up religious, so I have some issues surrounding sex, and I listen to, like, a LOT of science podcasts. And now, I am nothing more than a vessel for this vision of Chad, for this vision of him taking what is his."

He looked at me intently, and I returned his gaze, my heart pounding. I knew his words weren't exactly tasteful, romantic descriptions. I knew they were hyperbolic, even absurd. But because I also knew and wanted the man he described, I was moved, despite myself. I felt my own desire throb deep within me. I cleared my throat, and crossed my legs, then wiped my sweating palms on my left thigh.

"And how," I asked, breathing shallowly, "And how does he take me?"

"He takes you," he said, leaning forward across the desk, "by unsheathing his mighty sword, dripping with the fluid of lust, throbbing with the power of his sexual potence, and puts it into – your thing."

"My… thing?" I breathed. This word was where I, too, always hesitated. I hated the crass terms men used for women's bodies, for their sex. It seemed to violate a secret, to name the hidden as though its darkness were not part of its desirability. This location was what I'd always mentally referred to as "down there."

"Your place," he said, seriously, his slight lips parted and his thin chest heaving. "The sheath formed around his cock, and his cock alone. I cannot speak of it, but now that I know that you've only been with him in your previously young and virginal life, I also know with utter certainty that he has etched himself into your flesh as though it were florist's foam, and his dick was the instrument by which he has inscribed a furrow for himself with the savage thrusts of his body. You are seeded with the fruits of his loins, which burst forth into flowering when he comes."

"OH," I gasped. I'd hesitated when he'd invoked the florist's foam, as my mind was preoccupied by the aromanticism of the unnaturally dense material, dyed false green, but when he arrived at the flowers, I was emptied of thought itself. I ached with desire as I clutched onto the edge of the desk. "Tell me more about how he comes," I said, my voice soft and low, catching in my throat.

"First, he commands you," he said, closing his eyes and exhaling deeply through his nose. "He tells you to "come on." Since he regularly tells you to "come" when he means "follow me," I think he must mean "come on" as in "come on demand."1 And you do, and then his dick pulses, and the movement is so powerful it quivers through his hips as though his body were a bow, unleashing his arrows into you. His face clenches as though a mountain stream flows from his loins, into your shallow pool, which collects the mighty torrent of his ejaculate, and it soon breaches your walls, dripping and staining the sheets as he sows his fertile seed. You are not enough to contain him."

I was silent as a spasm rippled through me like waves passing over the surface of the water. I shook with the force of my body releasing me from the clenching grasp of my own satiety as I held onto the edge of the desk for support. "Oh my God," I gasped when it was over. "I've never felt so turned on in my life. This makes me feel so dirty. But it feels so good."

"What?" he said, visibly annoyed. "Ew. That's gross. I don't want to hear about that. Yuck."

"Sorry," I said, collecting myself. I brought my hand to my brow, and it was damp with sweat. "I don't know what came over me. I think that story is the most erotic thing I've ever heard."

He looked disgusted: with me, or with himself, I wasn't sure. "And that is why I'm going to die alone," he intoned softly. "I'm not him. I can never be him. I can only look at him, and perceive what I don't have, myself, as though he were a mirror for my own deficiencies."

"You're _not_ going to die alone," I insisted, still clutching the edge of the table as I tried to regulate my breathing. "That was really quite something. When you fall in love, you'll be able to talk like that to the girl you want, a girl who will appreciate all your elaborate thoughts, and she'll be quite beside herself."

"No," he said, sadly. "I've tried, with many other women. I've shown them my stories. And none of them want to hear it. They all say it's creepy I'm so obsessed with describing another man's penis and the way he has sex. Sometimes they call me gay, sometimes they tell me I need therapy, and then they always, always block me. They don't get it. You seem to enjoy it, but I can only conclude this is because you're fucked up like I am. And you're taken."

"I _am_ taken," I said. "And my husband is a possessive man. Even though we're talking about him, I don't know why I'm daring to speak to you like this, in his office, no less, while he's away on business. You're sure the security cameras aren't recording right now, and that it won't be suspicious? We've been here for hours. If you weren't responsible for the equipment in this room I'd never dare to say these things."

"I've fed the cameras with previously recorded footage of me working here, alone, on a loop," he said. "I've recorded a few minutes of when you came into the room to consult with me about your supposed computer emergency you're pretending to have. I'll make it look like you just came in five minutes before you leave here again. But if you keep holding onto the desk like a whore bracing for entry, you'll give us away when I switch back to the live feed," he said, annoyed.

"Sorry," I said, releasing my hands and clutching them against each other instead.

"As if he'd worry for a second about me, alone with you," he said, his voice cracking. "He knows I'm shit under his heel. I'm just a beta cuck. I'm not even a cuck because I've never had anyone. And I never will, because I'm too ugly."

"You're not bad-looking," I insisted. "You're not very traditionally masculine, I grant you that, but you're not unattractive."

"Sure, Stacey," he said peevishly. I didn't understand these code names; he had his own view of the world and its actors which I didn't share. "There's a reason you gave your virginity to Chad and not to me."

"Christian," I said. "To Christian. And I met Christian long before I met you, so I have no idea how you think that was ever going to be a possibility."

"It doesn't matter," he said. "You're all the same, you women – you all want him, and none of you will ever want me."

" _Are_ we all the same?" I asked rhetorically. "You said no other woman would appreciate your stories, but I enjoyed that one. Doesn't that show you that we aren't all of one mind?"

"All it shows me is that you're a freak," he said savagely. "I can't say I find it attractive, even, that you like it. I'm not sure I want to talk to you anymore about this."

"Fine," I said, though my heart sank. "I understand that you might not want to tell me more. Your writing does seem rather intimate. But don't you think you might be happier in life if you gave up watching, if it makes you so miserable, and tried to find someone to love, yourself?"

"No," he said, harshly. "I've tried, and I've failed. Please don't take this from me. This is all I have in life, to be the eyes that watch you with him."

My heart wrenched with sympathy. I had to make him feel the untruth of this, to let him know that he could be desirable if he wasn't so poisoned by self-hatred; that he'd find love if he could only perceive the beauty in himself.

"Now look here," I intoned softly. "You're being too hard on yourself. You don't know how attractive you could be to someone, if you just let them speak with you without being so defensive, if you just approached them in the right way."

"Bullshit," he said flatly.

"It's not," I protested. "You have a very expressive face. It could be appealing, if you weren't so angry all the time."

"The face of a sub-2 human," he returned, curling his lip. "You're lying to me."

"I'm not. And your hands are beautiful – they're so elegant. Let me see them…"

I reached for him before I knew what I was doing. I extended my hand and brushed the top of his knuckles lightly my fingers.

"NO!" he screamed, jerking his arm away from me. His frame shook as he recoiled from my touch, and he clutched his wrist as though it burned; his face twisted with fury. "How _dare_ you. You can ride Chad's dick all day if you want, but you dare to come on to me, just to test me. You selfish whore. You're as evil as the rest of them."

"I'm sorry," I said. I was anguished. How could he have misinterpreted such an innocent gesture? I had to make him understand. "You're mistaken," I pleaded. "I wasn't coming on to you. I wanted to make you feel better about yourself, that's all."

"Shut up," he bellowed. "God. You're ruining everything, with your stupid ideas. Just like every woman ever."

"I'm sorry," I pleaded, wishing he'd stop yelling at me. "I'll not touch you again."

"If you _ever_ break that promise," he said, "I'm telling Christian."

"You wouldn't dare!" I gasped. His eyes were cold.

"Wouldn't I?" He asked ominously. "Wouldn't I?"

 _1 Author Jenny Trout has observed this odd use of language by Christian in her hilarious and wonderful 50 shades of Grey recaps. You should read them, especially if you are an intrigued non-fan of the original source. Her website can be found by adding a dotcom after her name -thanks to the guest reviewer who pointed out the blocked website issue so I could amend this!  
_


	2. Chapter One

ONE

It had all started so innocently, with a simple call to tech support. My computer was running painfully slowly that evening as I attempted to review documents from home, and I'd sighed and cursed as my document editor froze, and lagged, and crashed, and I lost two hours of work, before I finally picked up my phone, having given up on my stalled computer, and, in desperation, emailed an service request to Christian's personal tech support guy.

When I'd answered the door, his eyes were as terrified as a wild animal's when they met mine. He'd dropped his gaze to the ground as he mumbled his own name and told me he was here to help me with my laptop. He stumbled over his own feet as he walked through the foyer, guessing wrongly at the direction in which I led him, and then checked himself as though he'd been pulled by an invisible hook back in the right direction, nearly launching himself into a vase on the side table in the process. I smiled and reached out to steady him, but he looked disturbed by my protective gesture, and flinched away from me, furrowing his brow in bemusement, so I turned from him and maintained my distance as I led him forward. He obviously wasn't comfortable around me, so I would respect his personal space to put him at ease.

Once seated behind my computer, he was obviously in his element. Programs I'd never seen before flashed onto the screen, as his fingers darted across the keyboard more quickly and dexterously than I'd thought possible. After only a few minutes, he turned to me and announced that he'd fixed what was wrong, and that everything should work fine once the antivirus program finished running.

"Thank you," I said apologetically. He was staring down at the desk silently, refusing to meet my eyes. "I have NO idea how I downloaded literally fifty viruses, and installed five of those… what did you call them?"

"Browser toolbar add-ons," he mumbled, clearing his throat. "Don't install any more of those, please."

"I won't," I said, laughing in spite of myself. "Oh, gosh. I'm such an idiot when it comes to computers. If I didn't have to, I'd never use them at all. I'd rather write everything long-hand with a fountain pen and post it – I mean, stick it in an envelope - and send it off. I'm sorry; I read a lot of British romance novels written by middle-aged women, so I sound like I'm not even from America sometimes, although I was born here..."

I was nervously babbling now, but the man didn't seem to be annoyed by this, or, if he were, he didn't show it. "It's fine," he said, clearing his throat. "You're definitely not a middle-aged woman."

"You noticed," I laughed, running a hand through my hair, and sweeping it free from where it had caught on the collar of my sweater. "That's nice of you."

The man blushed a painful shade of red. I wondered if I had somehow said something to embarrass him, but I couldn't imagine what. "Oh, please forgive my prattling on – Luce, was it? Is that short for something – like Lucian?"

"Yes," he said flatly. "It's short for Lucifer."

"Oh," I said, my eyes widening. "Jeez, it's so funny that you work for Christian, with a name like that."

"Yeah," he said, sourly, pushing his sleeves past his thin wrists. I noticed how their fine bones caught the light; they were the hands of a concert pianist or a surgeon, delicately wrought, but he seemed self-conscious of them, and reflexively pulled the fabric back down over his hands, balling his long, slender fingers into fists.

He cleared his throat, and, his voice cracking, spat out angry words: "I guess when you're rich and you look like a God, you want to hire a guy who reminds you of your own place in the world, in every possible way, every time you look at him. The name is just icing on the cake, I guess."

"What a thing to say," I said, staring at him, uncomprehending. "Do you really think so little of yourself?"

"You have no idea," he mumbled. "I'm, like, subhuman."

"What?" I asked, puzzled. I couldn't have heard that correctly.

"You wouldn't understand," he replied, seeming slightly angry, though I couldn't imagine why. "You're beautiful. And you belong to that guy. He'd kill me if…"

"If what?" I replied, concerned. "If you did the job I called you in to do, quickly and professionally?"

"Like I said," he enunciated heavily, "You don't understand. I'm not supposed to see you, ever."

"Says who? Says Christian?" I asked, confused.

"Yes," he confirmed, swallowing nervously, loudly enough for me to hear him. "That was our agreement. I tried to tell him, though, that I was too ugly to ever be a threat," he blurted out, then looked embarrassed at having spoken.

"Too…ugly to be a threat?" I parroted idiotically, horrified. "Lucifer, that's an awful thing to say about yourself, and it's awful to assume I'd be unfaithful to Christian with an employee of his no matter what he looked like."

He was silent, and I went on, unable to let go of my disturbed reaction: "I don't know the details of your arrangement with Christian, but I do know that this is the kind of idea that should really be discussed with a professional."

"Ha," he snorted. "You mean therapy. Wow, this is totally first time that's ever been mentioned to me in my life. _Therapy_. Where they pretend to work on what's wrong with you like it could ever be fixed."

"Can't it?" I asked.

"No. And if I had anyone to talk to, I wouldn't need to pay some chick to talk about my feelings with me, like my feelings are what's the problem with me."

"You're alone, then? Don't you have family?"

"Family," he sneered. "I guess so. They just don't understand me. All this 'when are you going to find someone,' bullshit every time I show up for Sunday dinner, and they really believe I have some control over it, when it's their fault I'm this way."

"Please don't speak like that," I said, alarmed. "If this is how you feel about yourself, my opinion stands – please get help. I know that you have health insurance, through Christian."

"No," he said severely, his eyes cold and dark as pieces of flint. "For Christ's sake, my health is nothing to concern yourself about. It's not anything new. Don't worry about me. I've been like this for 26 years, give or take."

"You've been like what, precisely? Angry at the world?" I asked.

"Alone," he said. He looked as though he also regretted saying this as soon as the word escaped his mouth. He pinched his lips together nervously, and, with shaking hands, stuffed his own unused laptop back into his messenger bag; he nearly dropped it on the table, and cursed at himself, wiping his palms on his jeans as though they were coated with sweat. I watched all this as though frozen in place. I was unsure of what to say, because everything I attempted to tell him only seemed to make him more upset.

"I should really go," he mumbled.

"Please," I begged him. "Can I help you in any way?"

He stared at me, and his eyes were full of heartbreak. "There's no helping what I have wrong with me," he said coldly. "Especially not by you."

He walked out of the room, clicking the door shut behind him.


	3. Chapter Two

TWO

 **Warnings: NSFW.** _ **This section of the story contains coarse language, sexual content, and verbal abuse.** _

I seated myself behind my laptop, moved the cursor to open my recent documents, and sighed with relief when I found I could, for the first time in hours, type and save without the program crashing. I knew what else was installed on this computer, besides the now-purged viruses and thoughtlessly accepted toolbar add-ons, because Christian had made it clear to me when he'd handed over the brand-new device last year: there was, as there had been on my previous laptops, a keylogger, and the video camera was always, always on.

I'd loved it, at first, being possessed like this, my every move tracked, as though I were a deer in the forest, the hunter who desired me always keeping me in his sights. I'd thought being watched itself was identical to being wanted, and I knew that being caught engaging in a forbidden activity meant being lashed with the mixture of pleasure and pain I needed to feel truly alive. In those first years, there wasn't so much difference between waiting for the sting of a whip and waiting for the harsh words of rebuke Christian would mete out in punishment for an indiscreet google search or a friendly email to a male colleague. In either case, the sting of his discipline would be followed by Christian's all-consuming embrace as he dug deep into my flesh, threatening to tear me in half with his want of me.

"You are mine," Christian would growl, as he exploded into me. In those first few years, the thought of his desire for me had almost been enough to make me come, but now I was left unfulfilled more often than I was satisfied. Now being his possession was no longer enough for me, and though I'd gasp, and moan as he climaxed, my cries would sound hollow and empty, an echo of the screams that used to wrench my entire body as my eyes closed and my senses flooded, obliterating my very self by the forces which surged through me. I was quieter now. Christian never noticed.

Christian was on the second day of a five-day business trip and I was alone in the apartment. After two more hours of work, I sighed, and picked up my laptop to carry it to the bedroom. I positioned it with the screen open and the video camera pointed in my direction, just as he commanded I do always when he wasn't there. I did this even though he wasn't speaking to me tonight, and I knew it was unlikely he would send me a message to let me know how his meetings had gone that day.

I had to be on my best behaviour, I reminded myself, to earn back his good favour. The red light of the laptop camera shone through the dim lamplight, and I stared at it as I tried to drift off to sleep, though I wasn't certain his eyes would watch me on the other side of the screen. I winced as I recalled the conversation that had resulted in Christian's anger at me: I had been so stupid. I really should have considered my words before I spoke, I thought to myself as I settled down against the chill of my lonely pillow.

"Why don't you just install another security camera in the bedroom?" I'd asked him before he left, as he repeated his desire to monitor our bed when I slept alone. I'd often wondered this, and he'd been in such a good mood that day, teasing and laughing and kissing me like the old Christian always had done, that I'd dared to ask. My query had broken the spell, and his face grew serious, then angry.

"Do you think I want to have my entire security staff watch the monitor as I fuck my wife?" he'd snapped at me. "In the bedroom, and in the playroom, I bring the camera. It's there only on my orders, when I fuck you and when I make you turn it on."

"It can't be much fun to watch me sleep, though," I had said, trying to keep my mood light-hearted, to cajole him back into laughter again. "Unless I make it more interesting for you somehow."

"Oh yeah?" He'd raised his eyebrows, and a slight smile played over his lips. "What did you have in mind?"

I'd thrilled at this, and stepped towards him, smiling as I considered his handsome face. "I'm not sure," I had said, teasingly, caressing the back of his neck softly with my fingers. "I might do something that's… hmm. Maybe something that's fun for you to watch."

"Tell me," he'd commanded, pulling me against his hips. I felt the solidity of his body as he held me against him; he was like iron underneath the arms I wrapped around him affectionately.

"It would be easier," I'd mused, kissing his throat, "If I weren't so…"

"So what?"

"So alone, in that bed," I'd said, as I raised my head to smile at him.

I had known, instantly, that those were the wrong words. He looked as though he'd been slapped, and shoved me away from him.

" _Christ,_ Anastasia," he'd snarled. "How dare you."

"I meant _you_!" I'd pleaded with him, but his ears were closed to me, and his face was furious.

"You think I'd enjoy that, do you? Some other man taking you, flaunting it in my absence, making me watch, where I couldn't fucking _kill_ him for having you?"

"No," I'd cried, in anguish, openly weeping, my hands over my mouth. "Oh God, Christian, if you'd only let me explain…"

"Shut up!" he'd screamed at me. "Don't say another word."

H e'd stalked away from me and locked the door of his office, and although I had pounded on it, and texted him, and called him on his phone, he ignored me. I was being punished, and this was one of my least favourite ways of being punished. I tried not to think about my very least preferred of his punishments as I recollected my own misdeeds, the reason for his continued silence. He'd promised it would never happen again, and I should believe him, I reminded myself. This was my own fault, and I should give him some space, I had decided, wiping my tear-stained face as I went to bed alone.


	4. Chapter Three

THREE

 _WARNINGS: NSFW. This chapter contains coarse language, sexual language, non-graphic discussions of death, and non-graphic mentions of animal attacks against humans._

* * *

Christian's business trip had begun the Monday following this incident, and he hadn't even said goodbye to me. For three days, he continued to ignore my emails and phone calls, and I felt desperately sad, powerless to reach out to him and make him understand that I'd meant nothing like what he thought I'd said. As I reflected on where I'd gone wrong with Christian that Sunday, I recalled yesterday's failure to reach out to Lucifer in his loneliness. What was wrong with me lately? I wondered. I couldn't seem to make myself understood when it mattered most. I was sure the fault lay with me, not with either of them. It would probably benefit me to spend some time working on my own communication skills to avoid these difficult situations, to avoid making the men around me angry with my own thoughtless words and actions, I chastised myself.

My work today, despite my personal difficulties, had lifted my spirits slightly. I'd accompanied Kay, one of my literary agents, to a local writing conference to hear book pitches and collect manuscript proposals. While my agents were responsible for running these sessions, and I always trusted their verdicts without overruling their decisions, the process of hearing the pitches was endlessly fascinating to me, and I lurked in these sessions as often as my schedule would allow.

The pitch which had unfolded before my eyes that afternoon was certainly a pitch destined for nowhere, though, paradoxically, was quite possibly the most entertaining one I'd heard in months. As I glanced down at the summary the author handed to me and saw its title, I smiled to myself: "Tales of the Gods and Goddesses, from Ovid," it read. In my younger years, I'd been fascinated by the idea of an inner goddess commenting on the action in my life, encouraging me and directing me by turns. Perhaps because I was already sympathetic to this idea, I found myself swayed by the tableau in front of me, wanting, despite my better judgment, to find in this tale a story I could retell to others.

"Thanks for meeting with us today," a young woman greeted us as she approached. Instead of taking a seat, she stood across from us, while four friends hovered around her, carrying a strange assortment of props. In a noisy room of writers dressed in their finest business-casual, each of them babbling nervously to agents and editors, she certainly stood out: she was wearing a bizarre costume, consisting of a fur cape, a Grecian tunic, and leather sandals. Kay looked nonplussed at her attire, flicking her eyes warily over this ensemble, and sighing slightly to herself. "God," I could almost hear her thinking, "This is going to be a complete waste of our time."

The woman seemed unperturbed by this reaction. Her face sparkled with merriment, creasing into dimples as she spoke. "Today, joining me in my retelling of scenes from Ovid are my colleagues from the Hellas theater troupe, as seen in Seattle's recent summer theater festival. And now, I present to you the story of Diana and Actaeon."

The young woman's expression turned somber as she stood in place to my right. An actor held a sheet of translucent plastic in front of her, and she mimed the acts of bathing. To the left, a man approached, and he stared at her; the sheet was lowered, and she froze, returning his gaze. Then another translucent partition slid in front of the man, and we could see a crown of sorts placed on his head. When it was moved aside, he wore the head of a stag, his antlers magnificent. Seconds later, three actors descended on him, and they mimed mauling him; the man resisted them, then sank to the ground, as the woman watched, her face conveying angry power as he crumpled to the ground. Her eyes met mine, and I nearly gasped; they were flashing, deep-grey eyes, and I felt as though she saw into my very soul.

I blinked, as the actors picked themselves up from the ground, breaking the spell, and the young woman relaxed, turning to face us with her palms lightly pressed together, her lips in a light smile. Kay and I applauded, and I was relieved when, assessing her reaction, I saw her face crease with amusement, though she looked like she might be holding back other, less favourable expressions. She raised her eyebrows at me as she met my eyes, and I gave a resigned sigh, as I laughed lightly. Despite how entertaining this had been, one of us now had to break the news – this was a veritable case study in what _not_ to do when pitching a novel.

"Wow," laughed Kay, as she clasped her hands. "That was… interesting. But has it occurred to you that a novel is – how shall I put this – not a visual medium?"

"Yes," smiled the young woman, turning to face us. "Well, we have a bit of a project summary on that sheet of paper we passed around. So, for our pitch, we thought we'd first show you the atmosphere of the scene, and then talk about how we're going to translate it into a story for the young adult market."

"Great," returned Kay. She frowned slightly, and shuffled the stack of other pitches in her hands. "Let's talk about some of the words of this tale. One line – what's it about?"

"A goddess discovers her own power, and her own desire," said the woman calmly, as if this were a plot and not a completely abstract idea.

"I see," Kay returned, leaning back in her chair. "Ana," she said, turning to me with perceptible relief at not having to be the bearer of bad news: "Why don't you take this one? Please, give our esteemed storytellers some feedback."

"Gladly," I said, smiling broadly. Despite the utter disaster that their pitch had been, I couldn't help but feel sympathetic towards the group, and I genuinely wanted to help them. "Firstly, I have some questions. Can you explain what happens in this story, in words this time?" I glanced down at the sheet of paper they'd passed along which contained summary details, and spotted an author's name. "Athena – that's you, isn't it?" I looked up at the young woman, who nodded. "Great. Please, in a few sentences, tell us about the plot."

"The goddess Diana is surprised, bathing in the woods," she began. "The hunter Actaeon is lost in the forest, and he stumbles upon her, as she is washing in a mountain stream. He doesn't mean to see her, but he does, and because he sees her, naked, seeing all the secret parts of her, she cannot let him live. So, she transforms him into the object of his own desire, the thing he hunts for: a stag. And then his own dogs, which accompany him in the hunt, turn on him, and devour him, without knowing what they're doing."

Athena was still smiling. Kay's face, as I glanced back at her, wore a slightly horrified expression, which she was visibly struggling to restrain.

"I see," I said, my mind churning. I didn't want to be too harsh on Athena. Perhaps some gentle observations would let them down easily for the remainder of their fifteen-minute slot. "There are a few reservations, I think, about telling this tale in a modern context, and for a young audience," I began. "For some reason – let's call it a hunch – I don't believe that death by dog-mauling is going to be an easy sell for the youth market."

"True," laughed Athena, shaking her long braid of hair back from where it had fallen over her shoulder. Despite my critique, she was wreathed in smiles. "I know it's a little weird, and a little gory, but it's such an incredible story! When else do we get to see a woman wield her power over a man who would otherwise take her?"

"What do you mean?" I asked quizzically. "It's been awhile since I read the text in high school."

"When Diana transforms him into the stag, it's a lesson for the man about the danger, the downside, of possessing physical power, of thinking you can completely know something like nature" she explained. "When Diana turns the dogs against Actaeon, to protect herself, he's undone by the tools of his hunting itself, by the weapons he wields against nature."

"And the lesson to be understood by this is…?"

"The lesson is about the power of nature, and of women," she said, still a half-smile on her face. I could tell she loved this myth, and I smiled back at her. "It's about the mystery of transformation, the way that love transforms us. And it's about her own desire, how it causes her to act this way, recognizing that they can never be united, as a man and a goddess, in spite of this desire."

"Desire?!" I'd exclaimed. "You mean, sexual desire." She nodded. "We're getting pretty far from the pre-teen market," I continued, shaking my head at is inappropriateness. "What are we to understand by this idea, that she changes him so he's killed?" I continued. "Is this her, protecting her…purity, by changing him?

"Yes," she replied. "But it's complicated, because when she sees him, she wants him back. So, she transforms him into a manifestation in which they can be together. She turns him into nature itself, into the stag. She unites him with herself in that moment."

"Whereupon he is violently torn apart by dogs, as she, I suppose, gazes upon him with lust."

"Yes!" she exclaimed, beaming and clapping her hands together. "You understand it perfectly!"

"And yet she never consummates her relationship with him."

"But she does!" Athena protested, clearly enjoying herself. Her fur cape slipped from her shoulder, and she pulled it back into place. "She senses him with her entire body, because she's a personification of nature herself. She feels his presence, in the trees, in the leaves, in the water, after he's dissolved from his original form, which is mortal man, forever separate from, and other than, the woman goddess."

"Goodness," I laughed. "I know you mean that this all occurs magically, but all I can think is that we're going to be interpreted as encouraging today's youth to start taking mushrooms."

The entire troupe, along with Kay, burst into peals of laughter. "It's a fascinating story," I concluded, trying to suppress a final giggle; I had to remain professional, no matter how unprepared the writer might be for this meeting. "So tell me – is your heart set on literally retelling this story, in all its gory details?"

Athena looked at her colleagues; something wordlessly passed between them as their eyes met, and she nodded at them, then turned back to me. "I suppose we aren't," she replied, with a smile. "I know all of us love the myth, but it's not obviously the plot of the next YA sensation, is it?" She chuckled to herself, and her friends smiled. "We're open to your suggestions, of course."

"Wonderful," I said, relieved. "But even adaptation isn't such a simple matter. Since it's an old story, I'm not sure there's a single lesson in the tale which could be translatable, or comprehensible, in our time. It's a story from another world. But let's try – we've still got a few minutes left. Perhaps it'll help you reconfigure your strategy for the next time you pitch this at a writing conference."

I could practically hear Kay internally yelling that this was a waste of time and we should take a coffee break, but I threw myself into the process, and Kay ended up joining with moderate enthusiasm, though all our proposed plotlines seemed completely unsatisfying. The goddess threatens the hunter with the idea of turning him into a stag, and he stops hunting. "Too political," protested a member of the troupe. "They'll think we're going vegan on everyone." The goddess is on a swim team, and gains the power of water to thwart a pack of teasing boys who make fun of her body. "That's too sexually inappropriate," complained my agent. "And we can't drown the boys, can we? That would be too vengeful." The dogs are a pack of roving spirits who put in touch the spirit of nature and the spirit of culture, and they fall in love with each other. "I'm afraid it's a little clichéd," I sighed. "We all hold hands and try to appreciate each other a little more in spite of our differences? It seems trite."

We'd quickly run out of time, and at the end of the session, I found myself smiling and shaking Athena's hand. "Don't take this as too much of a disappointment," I encouraged her, but I hardly needed to say this, I realized, as the smile had barely left her face at any point of the discussion.

"Of course not," she returned, squeezing my arm as though I were an old friend. "It's a learning process, writing, isn't it? I'm so grateful for your time," she continued, beaming beneficently, "and for your kindness. I won't forget it."

* * *

"God," laughed Kay, later that night, after we'd drawn a long sip from our glasses of wine, with which we'd just toasted the end of the conference. "That crazy girl and her insane goddess vs. hunter story. That was certainly one pitch I look forward to retelling at parties. _Props_! Who brings theater props to a novel pitch?"

"Yes," I laughed along with her. "I wonder what she does as a day job, if the acting thing is a side gig?"

"The acting thing is most certainly a side gig," retorted Kay. "Successful actors aren't trying to pitch novels using their friends waving sheets of plastic in front of them as a makeshift set."

"True," I laughed. "So, what's your read on her? What do you think her day-job is?"

"Lifestyle marketer? Alaskan refrigerator saleswoman?" offered Kay. "No, I think if she were either of those things, she wouldn't be wasting her time with this. I've never seen a more charming or self-assured person. Shit, I was offering her free advice for alternate plots! When on earth have I ever done that for anyone?" I laughed along with her: Kay was famously hard-nosed, and it was true that I'd never seen her bend over backwards to accommodate a writer who had been unsure of their product.

"If she were selling me anything except a disastrously-pitched story, I'd buy it in an instant," Kay continued. " _Why_ is she doing this, do you think, messing around with a half-baked pitch at a writing conference, of all things, when it seems like she could be doing literally anything else with more success?"

"It IS odd, isn't it?" I mused. "I wonder what her intention was, with this – if she actually wanted to sell us a YA novel, or if she just wanted to act out her show for us, strange as that sounds. I can't say that wasn't successful if that was her goal, because who are we talking about right now?" I concluded. "She must have known her antics would get her noticed at least."

"Oh, I found her Instagram – seems she's a crisis counselor of sorts," said Kay, holding her phone for me to see. "Helping women escape situations of domestic violence." I scrolled through her photos. Half her images contained impassioned retellings of anonymous women's life stories as they left their abusive partners and rebuilt their lives. The other half documented her amateur theater productions, showing selfies of Athena smiling in costumes with her friends during practices, rehearsals and performances.

"Damn, if she isn't warming my stone-cold heart," Kay laughed to herself. "If only she'd pitched a story about her social services work to us instead."

"Well, she _does_ seem like a great person," I agreed. "If she reaches out to us for feedback later, we should suggest that strategy to her, and the name of a literary agent who works on self-help – no one at Grey Publishing is in that genre, of course, but there are others who'd be interested." Kay nodded, and then turned the discussion to one of the more successful novel pitches that day: "It's like Twilight meets Game of Thrones, meets Flowers in the Attic, for teens," she was saying excitedly, "Only Bella is more like Jon Snow, and Edward is a secretly undead Jamie Lannister, who's trying to break the curse put upon his family, which has driven him to wickedness and wrongful relations with his sister, casting it all aside to find true love and redemption with innocent Jon." This triad of fictional references had been confusing to me, rather than clarifying, so I drifted slightly as Kay rhapsodized on the merits and perils of this story, my mind returning to the girl and her myth.

"Gosh," I said, when Kay finally paused for breath, having exhausted her hypothetical narrative arc, "there must be SOME angle to that mythical story we haven't thought of, right? What if it's not a story for children, but a tale for adults?"

"You really can't let the thing go, can you?" sighed Kay. "Forget it. There's no point in hijacking an author's stories, or in pitching your own based on theirs. It's asking for trouble."

"Right," I said, chastised. "What can I say? I've always had a soft spot for mythology."

"The other problem is, what new idea could possibly be revealed by examining something so old?" mused Kay. "You said it yourself, when you gave her feedback. We don't live in a world of personified Gods. We don't live in a world where female chastity is guarded, where falling in love happens with the same unpredictability as getting the flu, and where you might be killed for falling in love with the wrong person. You might as well pitch a story about the moral code of an alien tribe as an ancient myth."

"I suppose you're right," I said, embarrassed at how easily I'd forgotten my own words just because I wanted the story to be told, despite its flaws. "I must have let the stellar production values cloud my judgment of the thing."

Kay burst into laughter at this, and I laughed along with her, at myself, I supposed. I'd forget it, I resolved. It was a dead end.


	5. Chapter Four

FOUR

 _NSFW: Mentions of nudity, and implied sex._

I fell asleep that night thinking of Athena's story, as I worried over when Christian would return my calls, and what he'd have to say to me when he did. I thought of Lucifer, and whether my support request would peeve Christian when he found out about it, if he hadn't already seen the report Lucifer had likely filed of his own work. The three strands of my thoughts flowed into each other: the girl playing the goddess, my difficult husband, and the shy man who feared his own solitude became mixed together in the dream waters of my sleep that night.

In this dream, I transformed. I grew taller. My limbs rippled with strength, my feet were swift and silent on the forest floor, and its green leaves bowed and swayed for me as I passed through the trees. I seemed to see through own eyes and from the eyes of everything around me, omnisciently, like a God sees as she constructs the world in her own image. I wore a cape made of a wild beast's fur over my shoulders, and I held a bow in my hands.

A man who seemed to be searching for something in the forest – perhaps he hunted an animal, perhaps he looked for something lost - appeared in a clearing. He had a face I thought I recognized, but despite my powerful vision, I could not see him clearly. I plunged my way forward in search of his face. As I advanced, I saw a mountain stream which flowed down the rocks along the slope, separating us with its water. I stepped into its current, where the shockingly cold chill of the spring woke me into recognition.

"Lucifer," I whispered.

His eyes met mine, only for a second, and then our bodies seemed annihilated altogether, as we were swept into a sudden surge of the water, far deeper and more powerful than it had appeared from its surface. The waters grabbed us by the ankles, rising around us, subsuming us, stacking us on top of each other in their churn, and then the current battered our limbs, striking them together with the force of rocks, which seemed to shear me in half, as though I were made of slate instead of flesh. I found myself grasping onto his body, winding my legs around his hips, clutching him to me as my other arm struggled to right us in the heaving waters. I couldn't tell, in my struggle, if I were reaching for the surface or plunging him deeper into the depths. My mouth was full of water, and his lips met mine. I couldn't breathe. Then the wave pushed us down into the darkness, pressing deep into my body with the force of a man taking his lover. As the waters penetrated me, I was gripped by desire that crested and swelled within me.

I gasped, and came to consciousness. I was naked, though I couldn't remember undressing, and the covers were flung around as though my bed were a boat tossed by the sea. I sat up, and turned to face the camera, where, on the laptop screen, I could see Christian staring back at me, his face livid.


	6. Chapter Five

FIVE

 _Warnings: NSFW. Coarse language, sexual language, manipulation, references to physical punishment._

* * *

"I don't see how there's any good explanation for you screaming another man's name out in bed at night," Christian had yelled at me approximately five seconds after he walked through the front door of the apartment. He'd opened the door screaming at me to come meet him, demanding an explanation, while refusing to listen to any I tried to make. I knew that he had rushed home from the airport as fast as he could specifically to have words with me, because he'd emailed me to tell me so, and that I should think over what I'd done wrong. " _Christ_ , Ana. I specifically picked that guy to do home tech support for me because of how ugly he is."

"That's horrible," I retorted. Did Christian really trust me so little, that he'd hired a man who wouldn't be a threat to himself? I winced at how Christian looked down on his employee, for what seemed to be no good reason. "He's completely average looking," I continued.

"Oh?" sneered Christian. I worried I was making things worse by pointing out his cruelty, but the subject of the tech guy's looks refocused his attention on proving that I was wrong about this, too. "Like hell he's _average_. You know what he did to get hired by me? He made a fucking PowerPoint presentation on how aesthetically deficient he is. Do you know what a canthal tilt is?"

"A canthal what?"

"It's this thing – I don't know. Something about the eyes. Supposedly his tilt is deficient, whatever it is. And his jaw is weak."

"I hadn't noticed."

"And he's only 5'6 and a half," said Christian.

"That's about my height," I retorted. Was _my_ height, compared to Christian's, a sign of my own supposed inferiority, I wondered?

"He's a pathetic-looking man," Christian scowled. His eyes practically disappeared under his eyebrows when he was furious with me, and I tried to not think of how unattractive it made him, like some sort of cave-man bent on revenge instead of a thinking person.

"Please, Christian," I appeased, smoothing his suit jacket. He stepped away from me, his square jaw clenching, and waited, I knew, for me to make my supplication to his anger. I extended my arms to him, in a gesture of appeasement. "Think of how his mom would feel, if you were talking about him like that to her face," I pleaded.

"His mom fucking named him _Lucifer_. I don't think that was accidental."

"It's probably some family tradition, or something."

"Yeah, probably because his mom was a whore who conceived him in a Satanic ritual. His dad's probably the original Lucifer himself. And now fucking Junior works for me and is making a pass at my wife, and she's defending him."

"Darling," I admonished, smoothing his hair. His face was stern, but he allowed me to touch him without pushing me away this time, though his muscles tensed.

"Forget him," I pleaded. "Honestly, I was just trying to show him some kindness. I really don't care about him personally. It was only because you were away that I called him in myself, instead of asking you to call him in for me. It was an emergency. My computer was so slow I couldn't get any work done. And I have no idea what I was dreaming last night."

Christian surveyed me stonily, obviously unpersuaded. I had to justify myself until I got through to him, I thought. "My subconscious must have linked him with something in my dream, given that name's associations," I rushed on. "Honestly, there is no rational reason for me to be yelling out his name in my sleep, which is why I don't remember what I was dreaming about. He was probably attacking me in that dream, instead of doing anything better. It won't happen again."

"It better not," he scowled. "Or I'm going to punish you for it. And you won't like it."

I flinched inside at this, but I plastered a smile on my face. "I'll be on my best behaviour," I told him.

"Is that a promise, Anastasia?" he asked sternly.

"Yes. I'll be your good girl," I cooed into his ear. He patted me, then grabbed me by the hair and wrenched my face to meet his in a passionate kiss.

As I turned my neck to ease the pressure of his mouth on mine, my heart sank with revulsion at my own false words. When had it begun, the pretense? When had my body stopped flowing with desire whenever he put me in my place? I didn't feel turned on by this chastisement; I felt demeaned and hollow.

And now, I was uneasy. It was unlike Christian to let me off with only a warning, and twice in a row, at that. If a misspoken word about feeling lonely was enough to send him into a four-day fury, screaming the name of a real man in my sleep should deserve a physical punishment. Why hadn't he planned one? I wondered at this as he strode out of the room back to his office.

Could it be that he truly thought Lucifer posed no threat? Certainly, Lucifer wasn't imposing in a physical sense. I considered his expressive brown eyes, which had darted around the room uneasily that day we met, flinching away when they glanced mine; his prominent nose, the over-large glasses that kept slipping down his face endearingly, his tousled brown hair, slightly unkempt, which wreathed his head. His lips were thin, but they were sensitive, and they'd pursed unconsciously as he worked and thought.

His frame was small, and his ribs had been visible through his thin black t-shirt, from which collarbones protruded with birdlike delicacy. He'd brooded as he'd worked, his face reacting to every sound in the room. He'd seemed attuned to everything around him, as if he were anticipating, at each moment, whether he'd need to take flight from some danger, real or imagined. I'd wished I could calm him, that something I could say would relax him and make a smile play across his lips.

And I thought of his beautiful hands, hands that, while agile and capable, had never been filled by what he desired. I wondered, should they reach for the soft curve of a woman's body, if they'd be trembling and uncertain, as though they gathered fruit from the alien trees of wild and undiscovered landscape. I wondered if his body would quiver with the force of his longing.

I shouldn't think about Lucifer's body, I admonished myself. Certainly, he didn't compare whatsoever to Christian's well-muscled and robust form. Whenever Christian took off his clothes, he paraded around the room like a peacock, confident in the knowledge of how attractive he was. It was as though he barely needed my gaze to confirm the lust he saw in my glances towards him. Lucifer didn't expect to be the subject of any admiration whatsoever, and I wondered whether seeing desire directed towards himself would be shock enough to undo him completely, whether it would shatter the cynical layer of protection he'd built around himself. Perhaps he'd waited his entire life to feel what it was to be wanted by someone, and a single touch would leave him breathless with desire. I imagined how the sensation of my hand against his own might reverberate through his entire frame, as though I could make his body sing with longing for me.

I flushed, and stilled my thoughts. I was married. I was married to a very attractive man. This was ridiculous.


	7. Chapter Six

_**Warnings: NSFW. Crude language, ableist language, misogyny, manipulation, voyeurism, non-consensual sex and sexual coercion.** _

_**SIX**_

* * *

Late that night, alone, while Christian was working in his office, ignoring me yet again, I found myself bored with my own work, longing for something better than the drivel I was currently reading. I set the manuscript aside and glanced at the pile of other documents I'd brought home with me, sighing at the title of the topmost one: _Song of the Seaman,_ it read. Please let that not be a terrible pun, I thought to myself. the genre was flagged as "romance," which did not bode well for these hopes.

" _Call me the man who sails to the very edge of the Earth,_ " read the opening line.

 _A long time ago, I can't remember how long exactly, I got really fucking bored with my job, where I sat at a desk all day, crunching numbers in accounting for an evil computer corporation that believes it's the literal second coming of Jesus H. Christ on Earth. I'd get so heated by the incompetence of the cocksuckers I worked with that one day I did what I'd fantasized about doing for so long. I stormed around the office in a rage, knocking the damn baseball caps off their autistic heads of Dave and Steve and Mitch and all the other idiots who thought they were above handing in their timesheets so I could fucking give them their bloated salaries they didn't deserve._

 _HR had some words with me; the choicest words about "company morale" and "needing to be a team player" and I told them, ever so politely, to go fuck themselves, because I was done with all that. And after I collected my severance pay, I got the hell outta the city and booked a cruise on the seven seas. You could say I was a real man and fell on my sword for what I believed, except I was smarter than that, because instead of dying I lived instead. And this was LIVING._

 _You know what you find out at sea on some classy-ass bored-housewife-let's-spice-up-the-marriage-midlife-crisis-cruise? A whole fucking lot of salt water, and a whole fucking lot of pussy just stewing in its own lemon juice. And I had plans for the both of them. I'd swim in the ocean so long my junk would preserve itself in the upright position, all crisp and turgid, like a fucking gherkin, and I'd suck so many lemons my teeth would need veneers by the end of the trip. What, you think I'm a monster? If they were honest with themselves, every single dude on planet Earth would admit that the sea has this effect on every single man. It puts a sword in his hand, and if he lives in a time when swords aren't a thing anymore, his own dick will have to suffice to bend the world to his will._

"Ugh," I groaned. The sword metaphor certainly wasn't original, and I hadn't liked it the first time I'd ever read it, either. And really, the author thought a graphic description of preserving his - _thing_ \- in brine was the height of eroticism? He couldn't even be bothered to imagine a specific woman he desired, just disembodied orifices waiting for him to – I couldn't bring myself to stoop to repeating his vulgar language. I blinked, and my eyes stung as though they had been splashed by salt-water. That thought was ridiculous, I realized. This was just an idiotic manuscript in poor taste which would never see another reader's desk, if I could help that. There was no reason it should affect me to read these words.

Yes, I had problems acknowledging the reality of copulation, sometimes: I still struggled to think of my sex in euphemisms other than "down there." I felt queasy at the thought of the more graphic words I could use. That wasn't me at all. Coarseness would never titillate me, though I knew it thrilled some. But certainly, such words weren't necessary at all. Sometimes restraint could be more erotic than naming the object of one's desire outright. Surely, I could do better than that horrible pickle metaphor.

I paused, staring at the screen, and then felt my pulse rise as I contemplated something I had not done in a very, very long time, a time when I believed I myself might have something to say, before I silenced my own words to endlessly listen to the words of others.

My story wasn't brilliant, that much I knew, but my breath caught in my throat as I wrote it, and I could feel myself tightening with anticipation as I imagined the object of my desire: a stranger, lost in the woods. He was not tall, but dark; not rugged, but delicate. He waited wordlessly and silently for a woman to notice him, a woman he'd spent his life dreaming about without ever seeing her face. He didn't know that the woman's eyes were everywhere in the forest, buried in its earth and proliferate as its leaves, coincident with the eyes of the animals who surveyed him in a thousand lenses honed by nature to place him in the panopticon of my vision. His innocence was sweet and it made me long for him. He could not see me there, though I saw that he desired me with his body, without knowing my name. He waited for me to claim him, naked and trembling.

I couldn't make the woman in the story reach out to touch him. I couldn't give her human form, and so I could not embrace him. The resolution of the story was a question mark, hovering somewhere below the words I wrote and deleted and rewrote, as the thrill of my forbidden fantasy washed over me, accompanied by the sensation of guilt which told me I shouldn't think these thoughts at all.

I don't know what came over me, but I stared directly into the camera, wondering if someone still saw me at this moment. Christian's messaging system and video feed were turned off, so presumably, there was no one watching. No one should be watching, but I wondered if a certain person on tech support, whose job it was to be the ever-present eyes and ears tracking me, watched anyway. I wondered, and stared.

"Lucifer," I whispered. "Help me."

I waited, for nothing, it turned out. There was no response on the screen. I sat there silently for a very long time, blinking into the camera like a startled deer who wanders into the road and is blinded by the advancing headlights. I craved the collision itself, my body meeting another's at full speed, though I knew this fantasy was, knowing Christian, quite literally a death-wish. I sighed, and shut the laptop, chewing my lower lip in frustration.

Christian came to our bed that night, long after I'd fallen asleep. I started as he shook me awake, then, smiling drowsily, pulled him into my arms, thrilled that finally he'd come back to me. He held me gently, kissing my hair, and I sighed with delight. "Ana," he was saying. "Ana, my love." I yawned, and tried to push him down beside me so I could curl against his chest as I slept, but he resisted, sitting up instead, straddling my body, then pulling down his underwear and tilting his hips towards my face.

"Christian," I laughed. "Really. You wake me up from a dead sleep just to…" I flinched as he pressed himself against my lips, smiling down at me. "Kiss me," he demanded; I acquiesced, and he sighed as I caressed him. After a minute, I leaned away, and rested my head against the pillow, pressing my hands to my eyes. I was exhausted, and simply being awake was painful. "Was that what you wanted, love?" I yawned. He didn't respond. "Let's finish this in the morning," I said sleepily, as I attempted to turn to the side, still pinned and immobile between Christian's legs.

Christian gently turned my shoulders down so I laid flat on my back again, then buried his face against my neck, smothering it with kisses. He laid down on top of me, and his hips dug into me as he positioned himself between my thighs.

"Christian," I said, feebly. "Please…"

"Don't you want me anymore?" He asked, his face crestfallen. I could feel the pressure of him against my body, and his fingers traced light circles around my sensitive flesh. I shivered with pleasure, despite myself.

"Of course I want you," I said, grasping his hips as I pushed my body upwards and away from his with a contrite smile. "I just wasn't expecting this. I was dead asleep a minute ago, and I'm tired. What time is it?"

"It's two in the morning," said Christian. "You forget that I'll be away all tomorrow. And now you make me feel unwanted, with all this complaining."

"I'm sorry," I said, pulling his face to mine, and kissing him. "You're right. Let's show each other how much we love each other, then."

He smiled in the lamplight. I'd expected a kiss, first, but suddenly I was gasping and crying out with pain.

"I already am," he replied.


	8. Chapter Seven

**NSFW. Coarse language.**

 **SEVEN**

* * *

"Hey, Luke," I greeted our driver when he answered his phone. "I just wanted to check in with you to make sure, because I missed Christian leaving this morning…" I trailed off, pulling the phone away from my mouth, as I sighed. I shouldn't be embarrassed about checking up on Christian with someone who'd worked for us so long, I rationalized. Even our episodes of marital discord weren't exactly concealed from him, I knew. "Anyway. I assume he's out flying again?"

"Yes," Luke said calmly. "I took him to the helipad at around five-thirty."

"Did he mention when he'd be back?" I asked, lightly, I hoped. I chewed my own nails.

"He didn't say," Luke replied, hesitating, "But I assume at close to the usual hour -around eight, or so. He said he'd call when he was close to landing."

"Right," I replied. This was humiliating, gathering details on my husband's activities from the people he paid, rather than having him Christian tell me himself. "Thanks so much, Luke. I'll let you go."

"Of course," he replied gently. "I asked if he'd told you about his plans, and he said he didn't disturb you while you were asleep, so I offered to fill you in. I wouldn't worry about him, Ana," he said, uncharacteristically. Luke was a taciturn man at the best of times. "He's been making videos of the landscape with that fancy new camera of his – he shows them to me sometimes," he offered.

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "I didn't know about that. That sounds like fun," I replied, feeling idiotic. It stung me, that Christian wouldn't even think to tell me about such an innocuous new hobby. Then the implications of Luke's words sank in. Did he mean to reassure me Christian wasn't out _cheating_ on me? The thought wrenched me, and I swallowed. "Thanks, Luke," I concluded lamely. "I'll talk to you later."

"Will you be needing a ride later today, Ana?" he offered.

"No," I said, staring out at the grey morning. "It's rainy, and I'd planned to have a cozy day, puttering around the apartment, getting some work done – you know, my usual."

"Enjoy," he said. "That sounds nice. Give me a call if you change your mind."

So, another Saturday, with Christian gone since dawn, flying around his dumb helicopter yet again. I seated myself behind my desk, placed my cup of tea down on the glass, laid my forehead against the cool surface, and let out a long exhalation. It was my own choice, not to accompany him, I reminded myself. I'd grown bored with it after three years of riding around passively strapped in place while Christian indulged himself in the wonders of flight. It was much less fun when you couldn't fly yourself and were simply along for the ride, but he hadn't exactly been supportive of my hints that I wouldn't mind lessons.

"You'd fucking kill us both, with your clumsiness," he'd laughed in my face. "Helicopters can't stall very easily, but I'm sure you'd manage it, and I'm not ready to die yet."

"Fine," I'd snapped. "I'll just take a day to myself, then." That one day had turned into several Saturdays following the same pattern, as I turned down another flight to lounge about or read manuscripts instead.

I raised my head, pulled my laptop towards me, and reached for the on button, but then paused, frowning. it was already running, though I was certain I'd powered it down for the night. As the screen woke from sleep mode, I saw that the command prompt was open, for what reason I couldn't discern. I only knew it was called that because I'd asked Lucifer what he was doing with that black window when he was fixing my computer, and he'd muttered the words explaining what it was.

A message was there in the prompt, which flashed in front of my eyes, and read:

 _Your story kind of sucks. I'm nothing at all like a hunter._

I rubbed my eyes and blinked. As soon as I'd read it, it was gone again.

"Lucifer?" I murmured to myself. I looked around the room quizzically. I was unsure of the form a response would take.

My browser launched seemingly of its own accord, and google search appeared, for the term "hunter eyes."

"Are Hunter Eyes the key to Male Sex Appeal?" rang out one title. I frowned, and clicked. In the list of male celebrities featured was a photo of my husband, his brow severe, eyes angled slightly upwards with the intensity of his squinting eyelids as he'd stared down the barrel of the camera towards the photographer. His face looked mean and angular.

"Huh," I said, scrolling down. "There's Christian."

 _Very observant of you,_ flashed another message in the command prompt. _You're literally married to King Chad himself._

"What?" I said. "I don't quite understand your meaning."

 _Never mind,_ he typed.

"Does Christian know you're doing this with my computer?" I mumbled towards the microphone.

There was a long pause. "If the answer is no," I said quietly, "you won't be in trouble. I promise."

 _Why wouldn't I be in trouble?_ He typed. _I assumed my ass was going to be fired after this, that you were baiting me with your sadistic story about liking me so you could laugh about it with Chad later when I came on to you like the fool you think I am._

"I wasn't baiting you," I said, quietly. "Though it's really weird you keep calling Christian the wrong name."

 _I know what his name is,_ came the reply. _I don't know why the hell you're still talking to me now that I've figured out your dumb plot._

"There's no plot to trick you," I said patiently. I could see why he wouldn't trust me, though given the circumstances, it was more than a little odd that I felt the need to prove my honesty to him, the person using my computer remotely without my permission.

"I still need your help," I continued. "And maybe, in exchange, I can help you."

 _Well, your story could definitely use some work,_ he typed _. But why would you think you can help me?_ _I already explained this to you. It's not like it's something I can change._

"Just give me a chance," I pleaded towards the blank screen. "Just tell me about why you think you're alone, and let me try to help you."

As I waited for him to respond, the seconds dragging into minutes, it occurred to me that I was trying to gain the trust of someone who'd been paid to spy on me. I considered how many times in the past five years I'd pointed the laptop camera towards my own solitary bed, as Christian traveled, never dreaming that someone else might be watching on the other side of the screen. He'd probably seen me…I brushed the thought aside. Christian had trusted him, I reminded myself, though it upset me he'd never thought to tell me the tech guy might also see what Christian saw as he ensured I was safely alone. Despite myself, I flushed with a strange sense of power at this possibility. Hyper-controlling Christian was so sure that this man was safe from my attentions, so sure he would never act upon any thoughts he might have, that he didn't care if Lucifer lusted for me in secret, and he didn't care if he saw me naked as I undressed for the night.

But what if _I_ cared that Lucifer saw me? I thought to myself. How dare Christian presume I was that shallow, that I wouldn't even speak to the man because of his looks? His looks weren't the problem, and I was sure I could convince him of this. Maybe, once I got through to him, Lucifer would drop his act of hostility, and agree to help me if I persuaded him he didn't deserve a life of loneliness, if I made him feel better about himself. I had to find out what Lucifer was thinking, I realized. I had to know if this story I'd written captured his own desires.

Lucifer's reply finally appeared on the screen, unfurling like a scroll as he typed:

 _I'll fix your story. And when you read it, it will become completely apparent why I am going to die alone._


	9. Chapter Eight

**NSFW. Coarse language. brief scenes of a sexual nature.**

 **EIGHT**

* * *

When I'd cried out for help in the night, the story, although it was what had brought my own unfulfillment into sharp relief, was not what had been foremost in my mind. I knew I was losing control over Christian, if I'd ever had any to begin with, and Lucifer's help might be my ticket out of my prison, where I didn't have private passwords to anything, access to my own bank accounts, or any of my own assets. My heart broke for the relationship I'd once had with Christian, or the one I'd thought we'd had, but I knew something was fundamentally wrong with us. He froze me out for days at a time. He didn't seem to listen to me at all lately, and his moods were unpredictable.

I'd brought up counseling in years past, after our marital tribulations reared their head once again, only to be rebuffed. Christian had decreed that we should both done with therapy after the first year of our relationship. Weren't we great now? He'd asked. We were, I'd agreed, but why not continue to work on ourselves together and separately? He'd bristled at this. Didn't we deserve some privacy, after all our hard work? He demanded. Wasn't he, right now, enough to make me happy? And what if we ran out of issues and simply started exhuming imaginary skeletons in our own closets? Those therapists were just looking to make a buck off a rich man and his wife, he'd opined. If they could convince us we weren't happy when we were, it was good for business. Who did I want to believe: my own husband, or someone paid to keep me finding problems with myself so they could fix me?

I'd disagreed with this privately, but I hadn't protested. Christian really had changed after the first year of our relationship, I reminded myself. I was deliriously happy back then, and wanted to preserve the magic of what we'd worked so hard to achieve. And now, this product of this hard work was slipping away. After five years together, I wasn't ready to give up on us, but I knew I needed to fix the problems with myself that made me unhappy with him, that drove him away, that sent me into ridiculous fantasies about some other man who didn't have power over me. I needed to find a therapist on my own. I hoped I could determine how to manage Christian, that the therapist would give me more powerful words to make him listen to me, because I was afraid. Christian was a man who regularly locked me inside a dark, soundproof room while he punished me for my behaviours, and I was on the precipice of making him do something terrible, I could sense. I had little recourse for escape.

So, when I reached out to Lucifer, Plan B was on my mind, should I need to leave the relationship – not for forever, mind you – just temporarily, with more than the clothes on my back, in a way that would be taken seriously enough to make Christian know I was not making empty threats. Perhaps if I gained his trust, Lucifer could help me access some of my own money and safeguard some of my privacy as I planned to leave. If he thought that I needed help with my story, and if accepting his writing criticism was where I started to earn Lucifer's trust, then I could take a few red lines on a document to escape forthcoming red marks on my body, or so I hoped.

Hours after I'd spoken to Lucifer, the rewritten story appeared. I had no idea what he'd done to send it to me, because the computer rebooted itself in an operating system I didn't recognize at all, and then the text appeared, seemingly of its own accord, in a program I couldn't name. I frowned at the screen, puzzled. It wasn't my story at all, but another, completely different tale. Not a word of the thing was identical. I thought maybe Lucifer had made a mistake, and sent me the wrong text. But when I read it, I soon ceased to care that he'd made himself invisible in the rewrite, and instead of my eyes observing him, he described what he saw through his.

The story now swelled to five pages of thickly detailed description of an imagined scene. A hunter appeared in the woods. He was a towering figure, a Goliath, dwarfing the slight frame of the man who hid and watched him under cover of the dark branches which shaded the ground. The monster's body dripped with sweat, and the forest itself was pervaded with his musk, as though all the earth was saturated with the aura of his fecundity. He groaned like a wild animal, calling out to his female to rut in heat. He pulled aside the fur pelt of his loincloth to reveal the carnal tilt of his manhood; it gleamed moistly in the faint dappled light of the forest, and it throbbed in anticipation. He sank himself into the waiting female, who panted, on her hands and knees, ready for him to fill her; she might have moaned as he entered, but the guttural grunts accompanying his priapic thrusts drowned out her voice. It was Christian, taking me, the procreative centre of his body the focus of Lucifer's vision, as it plunged into me again and again, until it dripped thickly with a milky river which flowed from between my legs. My face flushed red while I read the words: had it been possible, it would have turned purple with suppressed desire.

"Oh my God," I whispered, my body shaking with anticipation – of what, I had no idea. This was it; there was no more to the story. There was no consummation to follow. It ended, and so did the thrill of encountering these words, and I thirsted for more.

"Lucifer," I whispered into the microphone. "That story was amazing."

The story gained an addendum.

 _If you like it,_ he typed, _you are fucked in the head._

"Please," I pleaded into the screen. "Let me hold up my end of the bargain. Let me speak to you about why you're alone, and see if I can help you."

 _You're certainly a dumb one,_ he replied, adding to his postscript below the text. _But I guess maybe fucking Chad so much has emptied your brain, not that you would have had much of one to begin with._

"Lucifer," I muttered angrily. "This was a deal. Do you want me to tell Christian about this, after all?"

The cursor hovered and blinked without moving a very long time.

 _No,_ he finally typed. _Fine. I'll come to Christian's office later today and I'll explain, though if you don't get it now, there's probably no hope for you. Make another call to tech support with another computer emergency. I'll arrange the rest._


	10. Chapter Nine

_**NSFW. Coarse language, allusions to sex and male genitalia (though no actual sex occurs), and allusions to non-consensual voyeurism, violence, abusive spousal behaviour, and death. This is also the part of the story where you might start to feel like you want to bring in the brain bleach, for reasons which will become apparent.**_

NINE

* * *

"You're right: I don't understand," I said, abruptly. Lucifer had spent the past hour explaining how the world appeared to him, and I still felt no closer to comprehending his logic than I had before. The place he described was populated with archetypal characters who roamed the earth, each manifestations of a central idea: masculinity, dominance, chastity, promiscuity, power and desire, consummation and restraint. He'd talked about the names of these embodied virtues and vices: Chad and Stacie and Norman and Tyrone, beta orbiters and cucks, High-T males and the involuntarily celibate. He interpreted the signs nature had given these personifications: they were marked the line of a jaw, the circumference of a wrist, the crease of a brow and the curve of a chin, and, he explained as he blushed bright red, most importantly of all, the size of a man's penis, which somehow manifested itself through his entire body as though his frame were merely an advertisement for the quality of his phallus. All these disparate ideas blurred together into a cloud of obscurity, blending the human and animal, nature and culture, in an odd logic which was at the same time Darwinian and capricious. He crushed the possibility of genuine romantic affection beneath the heavy weight of appearances: looks mattered, and power mattered, and nothing else, except violence, seemed to be able to lift this burden placed upon the backs of men. Women got off easy, he sneered; they had to be passingly acceptable-looking, and they'd be drowning in whatever their hearts desired. For men, it wasn't so easy, not that I ever would understand.

I had practiced submission for over five years now, so I was more than well acquainted with the lash of the whip, but nothing of what he said resembled the worst details of my relationship, as disturbing as my former friends had found the particulars of my pact with Christian. While I didn't always like him very much, I did always love Christian, and I had always been faithful to him.

So, when Lucifer started in on how Christian and I were the perfect exemplar of his theory of attraction, I could only find him wrong, almost from the very first word. I frowned at the idea that my enthusiasm for Lucifer's erotic story was proof of my own frail female nature which was somehow accompanied by a libidinous thirst which could never be sated, but said nothing. However, I immediately refuted Lucifer's claim that without Christian to hold me down, I'd still - _still_? I'd protested - be throwing myself at every handsome man in Seattle.

"You've got it wrong," I said, crossing my arms and frowning. "I was a virgin when I met Christian."

"You were?" he said, becoming silent, his eyes widening. "I don't believe you."

"I don't care if you don't," I said. "Christian would tell you the same."

"Why haven't I read about this in your emails?" he demanded. "You'd think if you were a virgin, he'd be talking about it nonstop. Any man would. Was it in those pathetic emails about books you used to send each other?" he asked, scratching his head, and glaring at me. "I couldn't keep reading those – it was just Chad showing off, how stupid and boring he could be and still get you on his dick. It made me disgusted."

"You're a creep, reading our emails from five years ago," I retorted. "How much free time do you have on this job? And no, we mostly talked about - _that subject -_ in person. He didn't film me in his playroom until later in our relationship. Honestly, I don't care if you don't believe me. What difference does it make to you?"

He studied me, seemingly in a state of shock, and I could see something change in his expression as he gaped at me.

"It all makes sense now," he whispered to himself, his face incredulous. "That's why he married you. Alpha-Chad, who'd fucked dozens of prime females. You were literally the only level 10 non-roastie whore in all of Seattle."

"Excuse me?" I was affronted. "I'm not a whore, and I don't know what a roastie is."

"As I said, you're _not_ a roastie, so don't worry about that part," snapped Lucifer. He looked furious. "And you weren't a whore before you wrote your slutty story about wanting some other man you pretended was me, and I read it. But now you've gone and ruined things, like a stupid female always will. I should never have spoken to you."

"What do you mean?" I said, perplexed by his harsh tone. "Nothing's ruined. We just read stories to each other. They aren't real life. You haven't touched me. And I don't know how my story is sluttier than yours- you were practically climbing onto Christian's dick in that thing," I snapped.

"It _is_ a magnificent dick," he muttered, seemingly to himself, staring at his slender hands. He'd pressed his palms together and held them in front of his face as his elbows rested on the desk.

I was silent, the implications of this churning in my head. "Lucifer – how much have you seen of me and Christian…." I trailed off.

He was silent.

"Christian keeps all the tapes from the playroom locked in an armoured safe," I protested. I didn't know why I was arguing against what I knew, from his words, must be true.

He snorted at this, and said nothing.

"Lucifer," I said, my mind churning. "Obviously, you've seen them. I don't need to know how. I know you've exaggerated him slightly, in your story I read this afternoon, but there were such minute details in it, about…um, his veins, and, er…curves…"

"He does list slightly to the left," he said. "I guess I might have mentioned that a few times."

"And the mole right above his –"

"I know," he said. "A couple of years ago he started shaving there a lot more regularly and I started seeing it, and even though his hair is longer right now, I guess I always remember where it is."

"So, you've seen everything," I said, feeling more than a little nauseated. I'd _thought_ I liked the idea of being watched, but being watched with this amount of scrutiny over this duration of time was far, far too much, and it seemed I wasn't even the focus of all this observation. "You've seen it all. Everything we've ever recorded together, in that playroom."

"Yeah," he said, nonchalantly. He didn't even look ashamed.

"Do you know what would happen to you if Christian found out?" I demanded furiously, my voice rising. How could he look so calm, confessing to this?

"He'd flay me alive," said Lucifer. "I mean, my sad life is nothing to me, so it's not like I care. I wish he _would_ find out, sometimes, just to end this misery. Dying at the mercy of a man like that – feeling his strong hands around my throat as he strangled the life out of me…" he drifted off, though his expression was dreamy, rather than sad. "It wouldn't be a bad way to go for a pathetic specimen like me."

I recoiled at this. " _Christ_ , Lucifer," I blurted. He began laughing hysterically at that combination of words. "That is the most disturbing thing I've ever heard in my whole life."

"You don't know ten percent of the disturbing things I think," he said, still snickering. "You'd be horrified."

"Doesn't it bother you that Christian would hire you, knowing how you presented yourself to him, as inferior?" I demanded. "It seems cruel of him, that instead of getting you help, he'd say, 'you're perfect for the job, because I can use your personal issues in my favour?'"

He shrugged. "It's his right to think that way. It's the natural order of things. If we were in a more primitive society, he'd be mating with all the females and I'd be watching him do it, so it's not like this is different, really. I mean, I fucking _hate_ him, don't get me wrong, but I mostly hate that I'm _not_ him. And watching his life – well, that's the closest thing to sex and power I'm ever going to taste."

"So you're not going to stop watching," I said.

"No," he replied.

"And I suppose you expect me to keep your secret for you," I said, irritated at his blasé attitude, wanting to provoke him out of his assurance over his interpretation of the world. This was _my_ husband he was describing. How could he be so sure he knew him? Didn't I know him better?

"What do you think Christian would do, if he finds out?" I asked coldly. It was meant to be a test, but he rearranged the words of my question.

"Oh, if he finds out you _knew_ I was watching, and you let me continue do it, he'd be furious at you, and you know I'd tell him," said Lucifer. "I'm recording all this right now, to cover my ass, should things go sideways."

I was shocked at this. I considered how stupid I'd been to trust Lucifer going into this meeting with no basis of good faith already established between us. He went on:

"I might wind up in a ditch somewhere, but he won't make it easy for you, either. You know how he is when you disappoint him. How many days was it that you couldn't sit down, the last time, when that stranger groped your ass because you smiled at him, and Christian whipped you in punishment for it?"

"That's unfair," I said flatly, though I was livid at the memory, and at his mention of this painful event. "He apologized for that. He bought me a hundred roses, and flew me to France for a romantic getaway."

"And he put another diamond on your neck," said Lucifer, looking at the fourth pendant on the gold chain encircling my throat. "Every time he's gone too far, he's bought you another one."

I flushed, and caressed the stones which rested below my collarbones. "It was an apology," I said, heatedly. "He means to say he's sorry."

He shrugged. "If it makes you feel better to believe that…."

"It's the truth," I protested, though this sounded like too much defensiveness even to my own ears.

He appeared unmoved by my objections, though I was sure my own upset was written all over my face. "Are we done here?" he asked curtly.

"No," I snapped. "I just need an answer to another question. Is there any way to monitor the action in the playroom," I hesitated, embarrassed, though Lucifer only looked bored by my reluctance, "to monitor it… live, if he takes me in there?"

"I thought you were ever so horrified by my observation of you," he sneered. "Now you want me to watch him fuck you on a live feed?"

"I don't _want_ you to," I replied slowly. "But you've said it yourself. If Christian finds out about any of this – though, Christ, we're just talking about our writing, aren't we? Nothing has happened. But if he finds out I've been speaking about things like this with another man, and if he decides to do something about that while I'm in there with him…"

"Hmm," he said, his eyes flashing strangely with desire, though I couldn't discern why. "Yeah. I think I see what you mean. Sure, I'll set up something, just in case."

"Really?" I questioned, startled by this sudden about-face. "I didn't expect you to care, so much, about my safety."

"Oh," he said, lightly, smiling at me, though the smile had a sinister edge. "Well, if anything happens to _you_ , it'll cut into my personal enjoyment of the action a bit."

I stared at him, horrified. I'd expected this to be his rationale, but I hadn't quite expected it to be so boldly stated.

"Don't worry, princess Stacey," he teased. "Your knight in shining codpiece will ride to your rescue to preserve his own wank supply."

"Ugh," I groaned. "Do you really thing it would go well, if you just burst into the room for no apparent reason?"

"I'm not that idiotic a knight," he countered. "I'd pull the fire alarm or something."

"Right," I sighed. "I guess we're done, then. Thank you."

"Are you sure?" he said mockingly. "I have about another fifty descriptions of your lover's glorious dick in a folder right in front of me. I even made a print-out like a good old-fashioned romantic who thinks you can't truly enjoy smut on a screen. Sure you don't want to spend the entire afternoon hearing them, just for laughs?"

I composed my face, and sat back down in the chair, and waited. I was embarrassed by my own eagerness, but again, he wasn't even amused; he wasn't at all surprised. He'd _expected_ this. He knew me better than I'd like to admit, I realized, and the thought made my stomach turn.

"What do you want to want to hear first?" he asked. "I have three of my favourites in front of me. There's _Chad takes the virgin Queen from the cuck King on his wedding night_. I think I'd enjoy that one more now that I know you were actually his virgin. _There's Chad rams fifty sluts lined up in a row at the cock carousel bar…_

"Neither of those seem quite to my taste," I said, interrupting him; he looked peeved at this. "Don't you have anything resembling the story you sent me? Something where it's just me and him. Something simple."

"I guess," he said. "That was the third title, you impatient bitch, before you cockblocked me from saying it. It's called _Chad, in all his glory, takes Stacey yet again._

"Good," I breathed, and leaned back into my chair, clutching the armrests tightly in my fingertips.

He surveyed me, seemingly annoyed at my eager anticipation. "I really don't enjoy this, you know," he said. "I don't know why I'm bothering to give you the pleasure of hearing this. It goes against everything I believe. It's women like you who make the world miserable for me. I should make you suffer like I suffer."

"Why?" I asked, puzzled.

"Because you'll always choose him," he said, forlornly. "Because it was never fair that he has all he has, and I have nothing, and it's because of women that I have nothing."

"You don't have _nothing_ ," I protested. "And how is this women's fault? You're gainfully employed, and you're quite the imaginative writer."

"And look how far it's got me," he said sarcastically. "Reading porn to a bored housewife. Definitely living the dream, over here."

"You forget," I said, condescension entering my voice, "That I'm not a housewife. I run a publishing firm, and you're a writer. You should be grateful I'm willing to listen to you. And perhaps if you worked on a manuscript, and were open to some editorial advice to make your work more palatable, you could submit it to Grey Publishing. I'd make sure it got the attention it deserved."

"Right," said Lucifer. "Christian's amusement job for you to trifle with in your spare time would give you that impression of your own power, I guess. I know you can't write for shit, so save your help for someone stupider than I am."

"You're not interested?" I asked, puzzled. I chose to ignore his insult of my business. If that was what he thought of me, it was better he'd ruined his own chances before I invested any of my time helping him. "Then why go to all this trouble, of writing all these stories?" I questioned.

"It's how I cope," he muttered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"COPE!" He shouted, glaring at me across the desk. "You don't understand – this isn't fun for me. I don't enjoy this like you think I do. This is all just one giant fucking _cope_. If I can't ever have a woman, at least I can watch Chad fuck you…"


	11. Chapter Ten

_**NSFW. This part is more serious in tone, and therefore its depiction of an abusive relationship is genuinely upsetting. If you find a character who doesn't know her own mind maddening, this chapter may make you want to throw your laptop or phone through a window. There are also allusions to marital infidelity and poor BDSM practices.** _

**TEN**

* * *

After Lucifer's outburst at the end of his story, where he'd threatened to tell Christian about our conversation that day himself, I'd been terrified at what I'd done. Christian could not find out, I told myself, and so I'd worked hard to placate Lucifer. I'd soothed him with the thought that if he kept the peace, I would uphold my end of the promise. He'd be able to enjoy his life of voyeurism the way he wanted to, with no further questions from me, and I wouldn't speak to him about his stories again. No doubt that was exactly what he'd wanted, I thought bitterly. I'd been played, and so easily. I winced in shame at what I'd done, at how I'd turned from threatening him with telling my husband about his actions to being threatened by his challenge that he'd dare to tell Christian himself, and would reveal my enthusiasm to hear his stories.

How had I fallen for this idea, that my husband might trust an employee over his own wife? I flushed with anger, but then reminded myself that I wasn't innocent, either. I'd just spent hours alone with a man talking about our mutual desires, and that, at the very least, constituted emotional cheating. I was being unfaithful to my husband, the man I promised I'd never betray. And Christian had never once cheated on me.

The realization hit me in a rush, and I sank to the ground, sobbing. As I brushed tears from my face, I fumbled in my pocket for my phone. I owed Christian my honesty, I realized. I vowed that I'd tell him myself, tell him we couldn't play with bondage and punishment anymore until we resolved what was wrong with us, and until I begged for his forgiveness and he'd granted it, this time, without hurting me in recompense.

But first, I needed advice. I felt at sea, and clutched at the thought of a sympathetic and impartial stranger to guide me through this storm of my own making. I knew of a counseling service, I thought to myself, as I reached for my phone. I didn't know whether this relative stranger's organization was my best option or not, but in that moment, I didn't care; I was desperate, and Christian had burned our bridges with every other therapist we'd ever seen.

I opened Athena's Instagram profile on my phone, and, with shaking, tear-dampened fingers, typed the number of the crisis counseling center she worked for into the dialing screen. I hadn't dared to save this number, in case Christian should go through my phone looking for new contacts, as he regularly did. As I waited for someone to answer, I recalled that only days ago, I'd told myself that it would take weeks, months, maybe, to even consider this as an option, and yet here I was. It was too soon for all this, I thought. I was overreacting. I pulled the phone from my ear and hovered over the hang-up button.

"Hello?" called out a voice I thought I recognized, though it surpassed coincidence that she could be on the other end of the line.

"Athena?" I said, bringing the phone back to my ear. "Is that you?"

"Yes," she replied, puzzled. "You sound familiar - Do I know you?"

I reminded her of where we'd met, the day she unsuccessfully pitched her novel to me, and she exclaimed that of course she remembered me. Her voice contained no sense of lingering upset, though I felt discomfort at my request considering I'd already let her down. "This is awkward," I said, trying to regain my composure. "But I'm having some… problems. I was wondering if I might speak to someone about them."

"Of course," she said. "This is an unusual situation, though. We're not really supposed to counsel people we know, even socially."

"Oh," I said, sniffling; I fumbled around my pockets for a tissue and then gave up with a sigh. "It's not urgent – I don't think. Maybe someone else can call me back, later."

"Absolutely," she said. Her voice was warm and comforting, and it reassured me. "Why don't you just tell me, super generally, what you wanted to talk about, and I'll leave a message for one of the other counselors?"

I told her everything. It came pouring out of me in a torrent of words. I'd offered, repeatedly, to hang up and tell the story to someone else, later, but she wouldn't let me go. "Damn," she muttered. "There is literally no one else available right now – our two other volunteers are in the middle of crisis situations. I'm sorry, but I think we have to keep going." I'd pressed on, telling her about Lucifer, about my relationship with my husband, about how I'd been unfaithful today, about how I was afraid.

"Do you mean to say," she told me, when I'd finished, her voice rising, "that you practice BDSM with your husband, and he regularly disregards your safe words?"

"Yes," I said, sniffing. "But that's his thing, you know – it comes with the territory of this kind of relationship."

"NO," she said, her voice staccato. "No, it absolutely does _not_. What good is a safe word, if it won't be obeyed?"

"It's another thing to give him a thrill," I said, sighing through my tears. "It's another line to cross. I know he won't ever seriously hurt me. I know he couldn't do that to me."

"Oh really," said Athena, her tone derisive. "Tell me, do you ever say no, outside of the context of your BDSM practice, and find he doesn't listen to you?"

"Yes," I said, my voice catching in my throat. "Yes, all the time."

"Does he hit you, outside of doing a scene?"

"No," I said, with relief. "No, he hasn't hurt me outside the room. That means things aren't so bad, right?"

"But he has hurt you inside the room?"

"Only unintentionally," I protested.

"Which is why you're calling me right now in a state of crisis." she said curtly. "Ana. You need to leave the situation before it escalates further. Think up some excuse. A family emergency. Get on a plane – your finances and belongings are one thing, but at this point, your life is more important. _Lie_ to him. Absolutely do not confess the details of your emotional affair without a witness present. He has threatened to hurt you."

"But he wouldn't," I said, swallowing my tears. "And if he did, it would be my fault, because I'd pushed him too far. I just need you to give me the right words to say to him, so that won't happen."

"Ana," she said, softly now. "Ana, it's foolishness to think that I can give you magic words to protect yourself. This is on him."

I sighed, and wept, and said nothing.

"Come in for an emergency session, at least, where you can speak to someone about this for a bit longer," she implored.

"I can't," I sniffed. "Christian will be home tonight. He'll expect me to be here. If I'm not, he'll be furious."

"Let's speak again by phone, then- even for five minutes, just to check in and make sure you're all right."

"I don't know how I would explain that to him," I said, haltingly.

"Pretend it's a friend calling you. I'll play along. I'm good at that stuff."

"I don't have any friends left," I said, sighing, thinking of Christian's estranged brother, married to my former best friend. He'd even cut me off from his own family when they started to question my frequent bruises and injuries, when my sister-in-law Katherine had taken it upon herself to research BDSM and inform me that we were doing it all wrong.

"Pretend it's your mom, then, and that she's lost her phone and has borrowed some stranger's," Athena suggested. "If you don't call me back at ten, just to say you're ok, I'm sending over the police. All right?"

"All right," I gasped into the phone, scarcely believing I was agreeing to this.

"I just need your address," she said. "I can be there in ten minutes if you need me to be, remember."

I dictated it over the phone to her, with a shaking voice, along with the passcodes to get through our household security.

It was eight in the evening by the time I hung up, and I was distraught, shaking, and starving. I'd barely eaten a thing all day, and I'd burrowed myself deep in my walk-in closet to make this call, out of the hearing range of the cleaning staff who might be roaming the house. I hadn't heard any sign of Christian walk through the door, but I doubted he was here. He usually called out for me as soon as he walked into the apartment, and expected me to come running to him, and I usually did. I wiped my tear-drenched face as I headed to the kitchen to rummage through our fridge for a snack, wondering if I should just pour myself a bowl of cereal instead, because if he weren't here already, he'd probably eaten dinner elsewhere.

As I walked into the dark kitchen and paced towards the fridge, not bothering to flick on the light switch, my skin pricked with the sensation of being watched. There was an unnatural depth to the darkness, and a looming shape which shouldn't have been present played at the corners of my vision. As I strained my eyes staring into the far corner of the room, a form materialized as my pupils gradually adjusted to the darkness.

It was a man. The dark outline of his broad shoulders emerged against the white cupboards as I stared at him. A man was there, silently waiting in the darkness. It was for me he waited. I froze in fear, my heart pounding.

Without saying a word, he rose upwards, slowly and menacingly, and leaned towards me. He filled my field of vision, threatening to swallow the entire room in the darkness of his shadow.

 _No_ , I screamed, my heart leaping to my throat, and I turned on my heels, running for my life.

 _He's found out,_ I thought, panicked, streaking towards the front door, screaming and hysterical. _Christian's found out, and he's hired a man to kill me._ My hands wrenched open the front door, and I flung myself into the hallway, desperately mashing my fist against the elevator call button as I sobbed.

"ANA," bellowed a voice from inside the apartment. "Ana. It's just me."

I turned, and, gasping for breath, saw Christian, arms outstretched, standing in the doorway. He was smiling, no, _laughing_ at me at my distress, and I felt a twinge of utter fury through my tears. How dare he be amused by my panic? I thought. I stood by the elevator, shaking, and glared at him. The car arrived, and the partition opened with a ding. I glanced towards it, and, for a second, contemplated stepping through its open door. I could go downstairs and speak with security. I could tell them that I was in danger. I could leave here right now.

"Darling," he said, still grinning, taking a step towards me, "Aren't you happy to see me?"

"You scared me," I blurted, then I hiccupped; evidently the combination of fear, adrenaline, and crying had wreaked havoc on my central nervous system. "God, did you ever scare me." I forced a smile onto my face and padded towards him. "Why were you sitting there in the dark?"

"I wanted to surprise you," he said, smiling, still holding out his arms as I reached for him. "It didn't quite go the way I thought it would. I thought you would turn on the kitchen light first, and then I'd be sitting there with five bouquets of flowers in front of me, and ask you where you wanted to go for dinner."

"Oh," I said, my brow creasing with distress. How foolish of me, to think the worst of him, that he'd _wanted_ to scare me like that. I was obviously mistaken to think I should be afraid of him at all. I felt silly now, embarrassed at my own hysteria, as I clutched Christian to me and felt the warm comfort of his arms envelop my body.

"Oh, Christian," I sobbed into his shoulder. "I'm sorry, darling. I missed you so much."

"It's all right," he soothed, kissing my hair. "Let's order takeout. I'll feed it to you myself, and then we'll go to bed together."

"Yes," I murmured, wrapping him in my arms. "That sounds absolutely perfect."


	12. Chapter Eleven

_**NSFW. Allusions to sex, and the frantic excuses and self-abnegating thought patterns of an abused partner explaining away their terrible spouse.** _

**ELEVEN**

* * *

The dining table was spread with paper takeout cartons and five massive bouquets of twenty-four roses, which blossomed over our dining table in beautiful shades of deep red and burgundy. I smiled as I inhaled their fragrance. Maybe Christian really was changing, if he'd forgiven me this easily, and was being so over-the-top romantic once again. I must have misread the way he'd ghosted me this morning after he'd demanded sex the night before; he'd probably just been desperate to have his needs satisfied after our week apart, and I knew he hadn't wanted to disturb me as I rested this morning. He returned my smile and raised a mouthful of Pad Thai to my face, accidentally stabbing my lips with the chopsticks as he inserted it into my mouth. I winced and covered my mouth with my hand as I pulled away from the outstretched utensils, making a muffled sound of pain. "Ow," I said. "That stung a little."

"My over-sensitive darling," he teased, leaning over to kiss me, and I eagerly reciprocated, though my lips still stung. "I don't play with you in a couple of weeks, and you forget what it is you can handle when I need you to."

"Yes," I said, nestling my head on his shoulder. "It's been so long, Christian. I miss you."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Christian, caressing my back. "I'm glad you haven't found another man to take my place while I was away."

"As if anyone could ever replace you," I said, holding him close, inhaling the sweet, musky fragrance of his cologne. In the surge of emotions that washed over me after my distress, and with Christian being so sweet to me, it was difficult to remember why I'd worried about us so much in the past few days. I was certainly letting my overactive imagine get the best of me, I thought, reminding myself of how Luke had taken pains to assure me that Christian's activities today had been totally innocent. I should trust Luke, I told myself, and I should also give Christian no reason to distrust me ever again. I'd forget about Lucifer and his stories. I'd find another computer tech to consult, or I'd ask Christian to hire a female consultant to help me, saying I didn't want him to worry about my speaking with Lucifer anymore, as a gesture of goodwill after the grief I'd caused him when I'd needlessly argued with Christian about whether Lucifer was attractive. It had been a test of my character and faithfulness, I realized, and I'd failed. I swallowed with guilt and fear as I thought of how far I'd let my intention to build up Lucifer's confidence become warped with perverse and misplaced desires. My secret meeting with Lucifer today would stay safe so long as I kept silent, that I was sure of.

"I know no woman could ever replace you," Christian was saying, cupping his hands under my chin, as my eyes filled with tears. "Only you could ever satisfy every need I have. Only you could make me come back to you and forgive you, even if you don't deserve it – that's how much I love you."

"Oh, Christian," I exhaled, pressing my face to his chest. When I drew back to look at him, I saw that the fabric of his shirt was now wet with my tears. "Oh, you're right. I'm sorry for hurting you, even if I didn't mean to do so. There will never be anyone else who could possibly measure up to you. You're too good for me."

"My darling," he said, smothering my mouth in an overwhelming kiss, "I need you so much right now."

I climbed onto his lap as he sat in the chair. My hands found his collar, and I unbuttoned his shirt, running my hands over his bare chest, lightly tracing the faint scars on his upper body with my fingertips. "I've missed you, being your sweet self," I said softly. "I've missed you telling me how much you love me."

He groaned. I could tell he was ready for me, even then; I smiled as I stroked his navel, then glided my hands down further, as I wrapped my fingers around him, stroking him through the fabric of his jeans; he sighed and flexed his hips upwards as I pulled at him through the material.

"Ana," he said, as he drew a deep breath, pulling me to his chest as he embraced me. "I want to fuck you right here, right now, but I want something else more than that."

"What is it?" I breathed, and smiled. This was the man I knew and loved, and I'd have done anything for him in that moment.

"Submit yourself to me," he said, his voice soft, his eyes pleading. "Meet me in the playroom. Please."


	13. Chapter Twelve

**NSFW: Sexual and BDSM scenes, misogyny, homophobia, and voyeurism.**

 **TWELVE**

* * *

I prepared myself, my body trembling in anticipation, rushing to strip off my clothing as my fingers fumbled with the edges of my shirt and my elbows caught on the fabric as I pulled it over my head. This delay was torture to endure, and I was thinking ahead, counting the seconds until I could braid my hair and affix the blindfold to my eyes, and then take my place waiting for him, savouring the knowledge that he would master me and use me for his own desires.

I remembered my phone, which I'd stuffed in the back pocket of my jeans, as it fell to the ground when I pulled my pants down my legs, and frowned at it. Oh no, I thought. I'd have to check in with Athena. She'd call at ten, in just half an hour, and we'd be in the midst of our roleplay. I texted her to say I was fine, and I hoped that would suffice. I quickly dialed her number, and voicemail answered me: I softly stated my name, and that I was following up on my earlier call, when the door clicked open, and Christian peered in. "Are you talking to someone?" he asked, frowning. "No," I called. "I was just muttering to myself." I paused at this, and frowned: how had he possibly heard that, in the soundproof room? But I didn't have time to dwell on this detail, not now. After I hung up, I switched the phone to silent and prayed Athena wouldn't return my call. If she made good on her promise and called the police, I'd say I'd been simply imagining things that weren't true, and I hoped the security guard could stall them for long enough that we'd finish making love before we had to explain ourselves. I thought of simply telling Christian what I'd done, but that didn't seem like a good idea. It would upset him, and then I'd ruin this beautiful night.

I heard an odd, muffled bang as I fumbled with my phone, and I stood still, trying to discern where it was coming from. While the room was silent now, I was sure it had emitted from the cupboard where Christian kept his tripods and recording equipment, though I couldn't imagine what would make anything fall over in an empty, hermetically sealed space. It had probably been Christian, causing a slight gust of wind as he opened the door, knocking over something across the room, I told myself. My ears were ringing with the room's stillness. I'd be damned if my own overactive imagination was going to ruin this for me. Tonight was ours. I'd make sure nothing would take that away from us.

I was ready now, naked, blindfolded, and kneeling on the hard surface, letting go of my worries, focusing my mind on the anticipation of Christian's control over me, as he looked at me with lust which I could always sense through my entire body. The delay until I heard his footsteps on the floor seemed to take hours.

He approached and stood in front of me without touching me; I could hear and sense his every movement in my blindness. I could feel the power of his possession radiating from him as I bent my head forward subserviently, and it made my skin tingle with anticipation. He didn't speak, but caressed my neck gently, moving my long braid of hair in front of my shoulders, then took my hand in his as he guided me to my feet. He led me across the room to a place I knew well. I smiled in the knowledge of what would follow.

He tied me up gently, wrapping the rope around my wrists, forearms and elbows in three triple-thick bands, restraining my limbs parallel to one another. He securely knotted the end of the rope to a ring atop the post on the platform where I stood. He lightly kissed my fingers, then guided my hands to hold the post's surface. He ran his palms over my body, then, standing behind me so I could feel the hard bulge of his erection against my buttocks, he breathed lightly into my ear. He traced his fingers along the sides of my breasts, then I felt his lips brush against my shoulders, as he kissed me down the length of my back. I broke out into chills with longing to reciprocate his touch, and I gasped with the pleasure, flexing my arms against my bonds.

I heard his footsteps as he paced off the platform; the soft rustle of the leather as he carefully chose a whip.

"Are you ready, my love?" He asked me. I smiled to myself. This wasn't how he usually spoke to me in the playroom. He was rusty with lack of practice. I'd remind him.

"Yes, Sir," I said happily.

His first strikes, light and teasing over my skin, felt almost like caresses. I delighted in being used like this. I felt the end of the whip connecting me to his hands as though the braided leather lashing me were made of desire itself, and my very pores ached with want for him.

"You like this?" he asked me, as the whip teased across my shoulders. That was ten of them.

"Yes," I gasped. "Yes, Sir. I love this."

"Good," he said. He paused in the rhythm of his strokes, and I could hear his footsteps as he walked around me. I sensed, but couldn't see, how he assessed me, how he examined my body. I felt his breath on my neck, then he stepped back, and stood still. He sighed deeply, and I licked my lips in anticipation of what he would do next.

He asked a question, the most basic question, the first one I'd learned by heart, in this room: "To whom do you belong, Anastasia Steele?"

"I am yours, Sir," I said, happily. "Only yours."

"Should you ever dare," he said, with soft menace, "to think you can want anyone else?"

"I don't, Sir," I said; my heart sank at this reminder of my unfaithfulness. Please, I thought. Please don't let him keep saying these things, accusing me. He'd said he'd forgiven me.

"You lie," he said coldly. I felt fear concentrating itself in the pit of my stomach. "You told me you wanted another man in your bed. To my face."

"No," I said, desperately. "Please –"

The lash of the whip whirred through the air as though a swarm of locusts descending on me. The tail seared against my skin, which burned as if it were on fire, and I gasped, and cried out, and flinched against my bonds, pain drenching my body in torturous waves. He'd never hit me this hard before.

"You dared!" he'd screamed at me. "You dared to joke about taking another man into my bed. And then you screamed his name. You screamed it while you laid in _my_ bed, where you are mine, and mine only. And you _will_ pay for that."

"No," I screamed. "You weren't listening to me. Christian!"

The whip caught me across the cheek, and I howled with pain. In my years of receiving lashes, he'd never once struck me across the face. I was an idiot, I realized. I'd be lucky to get out of this room without serious and permanent injury. I thought desperately of the phone I hoped would ring in the pocket of my jeans, before I remembered I'd silenced it. Then another strike caught me across the shoulders, as I slumped towards the ground, my body recoiling from the blinding, searing sensation of every nerve fiber of my body screaming in agony as the pain of the whip sank into my flesh.

It was a quiet sound, and it barely registered in my agonized state, but nevertheless, I heard it: the scraping of metal against wood. Something was moving in the cabinet where Christian stored his AV equipment. Something watched us.

I could hear Christian, panting with his exertion, stride over to the cabinet and wrench it open. There was silence as he surveyed a scene I could not see. Then, finally, he sighed. "Fuck," he was cursing. "You little shit. This is NOT part of our agreement."

"Mr. Grey," a voice pleaded. "It was her fault, Mr. Grey. She blackmailed me into doing it."

Lucifer's voice sounded utterly cowed. I could picture him trembling, crouching in the darkness, as Christian's tall form loomed overhead, glowering down at him from under the canopy of recording equipment supported by the stalks of tripods.

"Lucifer," Christian snarled. "You're fired. You promised to keep out of the fucking room. I didn't fire you when I found out about why you really wanted this job. But this is a step too far. Get out of here."

"No," he pleaded. "Please. I didn't intend to be here. It's your wife's fault. She asked me to watch you take her. She threatened me if I disobeyed her."

"What could she threaten you with, that I didn't already know about you?" demanded Christian. "If this is about your gay-ass stories, I already told you: I don't fucking care."

"And I told you," protested Lucifer. "I'm NOT gay."

"Whatever you are, you're sick," snarled Christian. "What kind of tech guy mistakenly emails his boss a copy of his fucking novel which is nothing more than porn, anyway? As if you couldn't erase the email if you didn't want me to see it."

"Fine," quivered Lucifer's voice. "You're right. I wanted you to see it. But not for the reasons you think. I wanted you to know I'd be loyal to you – that I'd never turn against you, not when you knew this about me. I wanted you to see that I knew my own place in this."

"Some fucking twisted idea of loyalty you have," Christian spat. "Spying on me, right here in person. I don't care what my wife said to you. You need to walk out of here, right now."

"There's something you should see first," pleaded Lucifer. "Here – she sent this to me. Who do you think it sounds like, in her story?"


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**_**Warnings: NSFW. This chapter will REALLY make you want to bring out the eye-bleach. It contains threats of rape, homophobic slurs, sexual coercion and unwanted intimacy, and a very offensive interpretation of the Bible. This chapter is censored to comply with FanFiction's guidelines. An uncensored version can be found by searching for my username and the story elsewhere online.**_**

 **THIRTEEN**

* * *

I couldn't hear what transpired now; if Lucifer handed over his phone for Christian to read the text, it was too light to make a sound as it passed between their hands.

"Fuck," cursed Christian. "And she was screaming your name in the night, too. I didn't take her seriously, but I'm a fucking fool to not have seen it. Let's hear some of this bullshit: ' _The delicate dark stranger's body quivered with anticipation as he searched for me. I was a looming presence he felt but could not see; I was a form without shape to him, a brightness which stung his eyes when he dared to look in my direction, but he knew only his own desire and not where he would find me. I had strung my bow to pierce his heart, but what I craved was not the sting of my arrow against his flesh, but the return of his gaze._

 _His lips parted and he exhaled. The wind of his breath was a caress, and I brought it to my own lips as I tasted the sweetness of his mouth through the leaves of the trees. They were fragrant with his want. I pulled him to me by guiding his footsteps, and he paused before the pure form of my body. He shook with anticipation, as though he reached out to touch divinity itself, as though touching me would pull aside the curtain concealing a sculpture he longed to see but which wasn't his to hold. He hesitated, his hands outstretched, unsure of whether he would reveal what separated my body from his own desire. He waited, and I watched._ '

"Yeah, that's some fucking romance novel filler right there, and it sure as hell isn't about me, all trembling and shy like the dude is waiting to be fucked in the ass. I haven't read any of those books she churns out of that Harlequin smut factory she runs, but that's sure as hell not YOUR writing."

"You see?" breathed Lucifer. "She wrote this on her computer, and she knew I'd read it, because she called out to me by name, to let me know she _knew_ I watched her. And I strung her along. I fed her some shit from my archives, just to see if she'd bite, and she did, like the brainless idiot she is. I read many stories to her – I have it all recorded, hours of me telling them to her, so you could watch, if you don't believe me. And she groaned like a whore while I read them. She's unfaithful. She would make you into a cuckold. You, who should be her master. She's not what you think she is."

"Anastasia," rang out Christian's voice, in my direction. "Is this true?"

"It's not like he says it is," I pleaded, tears wetting the fabric of my blindfold. My palms gripped the post in front of me as though it offered any protection from the punishment I knew was coming. "Just because I wrote something doesn't mean that's what I want. It doesn't mean that at all."

"And you shared it with him – why?" Christian demanded.

"I didn't," I protested, shaking with fear. "He was spying on my computer as I worked. I never sent him anything. You hired him to spy on me, remember?"

"Don't correct me," Christian growled. "You knew he watched you, like he said, and you wrote this tripe, knowing he'd read it. Don't pretend I'm some fucking dog who's too stupid to know where his own bitch has been sniffing around."

"Christian," I pleaded. "you promised you'd change – that this would never happen again."

"You promised _you_ would be faithful to me," Christian howled with a voice of pure rage. "You bring this upon yourself. You flaunt your indiscretions, and you place the whip in my hand yourself when you do it."

"You see," Lucifer said, his voice derisive, as I heard Christian's footsteps pacing towards me. "She's just like all the other ones you've ever had. She cannot help but be this way. It's her dark feminine nature1 itself that corrupts her. And now what she loved will be used to destroy her. It's what she deserves."

"No," I gasped, panicking, shaking and sweating as I gripped the post. "Christian. You'd never hurt me like that – you promised. Christian! You swore to love me!"

Christian had approached me, and now I could hear his footsteps as he paced backwards. I heard his whip flick against the ground in preparation for his strike. "If I didn't love you," he snarled, "I wouldn't care when you betrayed me. I've never felt so much pain as I feel now. I'll make you feel what I feel."

The whip shrieked overhead. It descended on my shoulders, and my body rasped against the post as I slid downwards. I was suspended by my arms, which felt as though they might pull out of their sockets. Pain blanketed my skin. The sensation surpassed my body's ability to process what I felt, and I was robbed of words and thought altogether. I didn't have the voice to cry out. My screams escaped my body without my giving shape to them; they were guttural and inarticulate.

"YOU!" Christian was shouting at Lucifer. "I told you to leave."

"It'll be conspicuous," pleaded Lucifer. "Someone might see me."

"No one's here, and if the cleaning staff sees you, I don't give a fuck about that," said Christian. "Get out, now, before I whip you, too."

There was silence; evidently, Lucifer did not stir. "I mean it," threatened Christian. "Quit crying. You look pathetic with those tears running down your face."

I heard a sniff, and then the rustle of fabric as Lucifer moved, but only by two audible steps, before he paused, holding still again. Was he _kneeling?_

"FUCK!" screamed Christian. "This is the gayest thing I've ever seen. What, you think because you assume the position I'm going to take you, too?"

"Whip me, then," Lucifer said softly. "If that's the way it has to be, then whip me, too."

"YOU DARE," Christian was pacing. I knew from the sound of stretching leather that he was flexing the whip as he tested its firmness against the strength of his arms in anticipation of unfurling it again. "YOU DARE TO OFFER YOURSELF TO ME."

"I don't want to be whipped, to be honest," Lucifer said, his voice muffled. "Just don't kick me out of here. I've waited for years for you to ruin her. If you want to punish me, too, so I can stay, then that's what I'll have to endure."

"You little fag," Christian muttered, disgusted. I could hear his whip fall with a muted clap to the floor.

"For the hundredth time, I don't want you to fuck me," Lucifer shrieked. He yelped as Christian's footsteps rushed towards him, then again as I heard Christian grab hold of him, and I gathered, by the sound of scuffling feet and the cries of pain that receded from where I stood, that Christian was hauling him towards the doorway.

"What do you want, then?" Christian demanded. Lucifer gasped, and stuttered out:

"I-I want to see what I could be, how I could dominate her, if I weren't so ugly."

"Oh really," raged Christian. "Let's fire up one of these ever so heterosexual stories on your computer and see how not gay they are. Every time I hear something gay, I'll lash you. That's what you want, right? Let's do it right now. Get back over there."

I heard Lucifer scramble back across the room, and listened to his shuddering breaths as he frantically typed into his keyboard.

"Fine," he said, breathlessly. "You think all my writing is gay. You're wrong; you just don't want to understand it. Read this, and tell me you think it's still gay."

" _The sacrifice_ ," read Christian. "Let me guess – it's a _Silence of the Lambs_ tribute. I should have known a serial killer like you would get off on the idea of killing something and fucking it."

"No," Lucifer protested. "You're wrong again. Just read it," he pleaded.

 _Thousands of years ago,_ Christian's voice read, _there was a man who thought he was the Son of God. As with all men through history who have ever thought this, he was wrong. But the joke was on us this time. He fooled everyone. He fooled even himself, in what he set out to achieve. But thanks to his example, we will be fools no longer._

 _This man, because he was deluded, thought that he would abstain from sex for thirty-three years and that this would prove he was holy. He had the opportunity to fuck a woman, at some point or another. Two of them took him into their house and waited on him hand and foot, but he just healed their supposedly-dead brother and left them panting for him. They were probably fat and ugly. Some harlot touched him because her backup option was sick and she desired his healing. She was cheating on her husband with the beta orbiter. Our saviour supposedly cured the second-string dude and told the woman to return to her cuck husband, which was enough to convince her of his magical powers. I bet he didn't need God to tell him that every second woman in the city had a sidepiece. She probably claimed he cured her discarded lover without ever seeing him again, like a typical lying woman. And Mr. Magic supposedly healed a third woman who had seven demons, which already tells you she was a crazy bitch who can't be trusted. This used-up cunt washed his feet with perfume and dried his skin with her hair and kissed his toes while she cried. He didn't let her climb on his dick, either. This was because he knew that she was fucking nuts, and an ancient desert roastie who'd lain with many men, but in the end, it's really the crazy bitch's fault that we're in this mess we are today, of believing him literally rather than seeing him as a symbol of this fucked up human condition. But I digress._

 _He was the first of our kind. You'll say it doesn't count because it's voluntary that the didn't have sex with anyone. I'd say you're not wrong - that's in the fucking book, that it was voluntary. But he was the first to show us how women are, and his life itself was the first to give us a warning._

 _He was wrong that he was a God, but in his mistake, he took upon himself the circumstance of every man who is not a God and has therefore never been with a woman: it is torture. This is the truth of what he told us. He found himself up on that cross, and the Romans, with their whips, with their sponges filled with vinegar, and their crown of thorns, punished him, just as the world does to us, mocking us in our suffering. I bet he realized exactly how stupid he'd been as he hung there dying. "Look at my body, wrecked and bleeding," he must have said. "This is what it is, to not fuck someone. This is what it is, to be not fully a man. And this delusion, this idea that there is redemption and forgiveness in the world, is what I will prove is a lie, through the evil witness of woman."_

 _Who is woman in the Bible? Firstly, she is formed from man. God opens Adam's body and pulls out a rib. The first condition of humanity is a man, suffering because of a woman, and a woman, taking from a man what is rightly his. She owes her very life to him, and she won't acknowledge it except by making him suffer out of lust for her, as she denies he has the right to put his cock in her to reclaim the piece of his body she stole from him. She is the one who eats the apple offered by the snake. She can't resist the powerful coil of the snake calling her name in the garden, any more than she can resist the gleaming girth of Chad's cock as he seduces her. Because of her, because of the woman's lust for the snake which whispers to her, we aren't in paradise today. Every bit of agony on the face of the earth is directly because of her. She is to be especially punished with pain, or so their good book tells us, as if she could truly understand what it is to feel pain – can you understand something which you cause but don't regret? I don't think so._

 _And think of the central message of this foolish religion, that sins can be forgiven, that death isn't real, that suffering isn't forever. How do we know this message? It's because of a woman's lies. That same deceitful whore of the seven demons was so sad about the man she couldn't have, now dead, that she lied to everyone that he was still alive. She claimed he was fucking resurrected, even. She made up an angel to corroborate her story. And they believed her, like the fools they are, like the fools we all are, to ever believe a word that comes out of a woman's mouth. How could it be that easy? But it was – soon all the other men were lying, too, just to save face, to pretend like he was better friends with them than he was with some slut._

 _Forgiveness is a lie, a lie borne of woman. Forgiveness is a delusion, a chimera, like the spawn of the hypergamous woman who fucks man after man until her womb is a rainbow promise of the progeny of different fathers. She tried to pass off this lie upon us, the same lie she would tell the cuckold husband, of the child she pretends is his, but we, the ones who know the truth, know her nature, and we will punish her for it. This child will not be ours, but we only recognize it never was._

 _She is only right with the world when she is bleeding and suffering, like he did, like we all do when the world takes us from her side, when, through the cruelty of our own ugliness, the veil is stripped away, and we see the truth. Jacob thought he was marrying Rachael because of the veil, but he got the worthless hag named Leah instead, and it's always been that way, that even the fortunate expect Rachael and get Leah, except that Rachael herself isn't worth the suffering. This man showed us the truth of the humiliation it entails to not have a woman. The whip is in the hand of a righteous man who flays the woman, just as this man died to reveal our own suffering. As she dies, she still cries out with longing, the wanton shrieks of the whore who thinks that even the exposed flesh of her body, gushing out her own desire from every new orifice he tears into her skin, might still tempt him into the blindness of lust._

 _I dwell in a house with a man who bears the name of this religion and the woman who answers to his call. Every day, the man has succumbed to her, the woman. He whips her, and then he fucks her. He is close to the truth, but he does not yet see her nature. But he will. Someday, he will, and then there will be no rest until he puts down the whip until it is covered with the blood of her own spent life. And I will watch._

"Fuck," Christian gasped. "This is the most perverted and disgusting thing I have ever read in my entire life. I'm not even religious, and I'm into some fucked-up shit, and I still think this bullshit is fucking disrespectful."

"Look at her," Lucifer was pleading. "Look at the woman you thought you loved – look at how she threw herself at me. I have shown you how she is. And now you know the darkness in her will never be killed unless she loses her own life. Am I not mistaken?"

"Anastasia," Christian screamed my name; he strode towards me and ripped off my blindfold. "Anastasia, tell me you love me."

"I do," I cried in agony; he'd caught a strand of my hair with the blindfold and ripped it from my head, and the tendrils drifted over my shoulders as they fell; I felt tears streak over my cheeks and down my chin.

Christian's face was contorted in anguish, and he was stalking away from me, back to Lucifer. I tried to meet his glance, to reach out to him in a reminder of our commitment to each other, despite my suffering, but he would not turn his head. "Christian, I love you so much." I called to him, my voice breaking into sobs. "Please, stop this right now."

"She lies," said Lucifer; his face streaked with his own tears, a river of snot pouring from his nose, which he wiped on the back of his hand. "She's been lying to you this whole time. I've given you the proof, and still you don't believe me."

"Telling me I'm going to kill her," Christian said furiously. "Who the fuck do you think I am? Do you think I'm a dog, that you can turn me against her? Do you not know that I'm loyal to her and you're the intruder?"

"She touched me," said Lucifer, his voice shaking. "She said, and I quote, 'your hands are so beautiful, let me see them,' and then she grabbed me."

"LIAR!" shrieked Christian, and he raised the whip. It tore at Lucifer's shirt as it descended, and he collapsed to the floor, howling in agony, his face pressed to the surface, writhing in the sting of Christian's blow. "Anastasia," he snarled, advancing to me, "Tell me what happened."

"I was trying to make him feel better about himself," I said, sobbing. "He misinterpreted what I meant."

"He's _not_ lying, then" said Christian. His grey eyes were cold as granite, and he stepped back from me. "Anastasia, you're telling me you touched this man and told him you found him attractive."

"It was innocent," I pleaded. "It was nothing like he says it was."

"LISTEN," bawled Lucifer, still writing in pain. "Listen to the recording. It's on my computer. I'll show you," he said, staggering towards the cabinet. I became aware, through my own pain, of an object which shouldn't be there: a mirror was placed on the top shelf of the cupboard, where Christian stored auxiliary cables and adaptors; it was angled strangely downwards, reflecting Lucifer's tear-streaked face, and Christian's lower body as he approached the cabinet.

Christian glanced back as he waited for Lucifer to find the audio file, and saw my puzzled expression; he frowned, and, following my gaze, stepped closer to the shelf, grabbed the mirror with his hands, and pulled it down. A small video camera was taped to the stand which supported it.

"You're recording this," he said, comprehension dawning. "You're trapping me, aren't you." He tore the mirror away from the device, and smashed it against the wall, where it split in three large pieces, its sliver fragmenting to knifelike shards. He tore the cylinder of the camera apart, and scattered its components across the room like seeds in the wind. Then he wrenched the laptop out of Lucifer's hands, just as it began emitting Lucifer's own voice, and hurled it against the floor's surface. Because of its thick padding, the device only bounced against the ground, undamaged. Christian cursed as he fumbled with it, slamming it down with impotent thuds, which softened the punishment he was attempting to render with his bare hands. The case refused to break, and Lucifer's own voice resounded out of it: " _mighty rod….like the Leviathan from the sea,"_ its speakers crackled.

Christian smashed his fists against the keyboard, cursing as their metal edges dug into his bare flesh; they clung to his skin as they fell away from their mountings, one by one, then clattered to the ground, like teeth spat out of a wounded mouth, and the recording was silenced. He tossed aside its empty shell.

"You think you're so fucking smart," he scowled at Lucifer, who had retreated to the far corner of the room. He strode towards the man where he lay prone, legs curled under his body, cowering and defenseless, shielding his face with his arm. "You've got me all figured out. You'll tell me this evidence of my wife cheating on me and I'll go ballistic and I'll kill her just to fulfill your perverted fantasy. I'll tell you how wrong you are. It's not because I hate her that I do this, it's because I love her."

Lucifer was silent, finally; I think he knew that if he dared talk back again, Christian would have strangled him, so he watched, and he waited.

"What you've given me," he said, slowly, stepping up to stand behind me on the platform where I was still chained to the post, "is a gift. I've always known she was like this – fickle. I've always known that I should be jealous, that it wasn't just an irrational feeling, but something I had to do, for her sake, too. Now I know just how much she is in my debt. And I know that she loves me so much she'll give me everything to make it right again. Even now."

"Anastasia," he said softly, pressing himself against the length of my body as his arms encircled me, "I'm going to take you right now. I'm going to take you in front of him. He'll know how wrong he is about both of us, when I'm done with you. And then we're going to lock him in here and I'm going to call my lawyer and the police, and we're going to have him arrested."

"Christian," I said, feeling like I would throw up. "Christian, I don't want to do this."

"Yes, you do," he said, and I heard the sound of his zipper unfurling. I felt his body press against mine, threatening to violate me. He held himself there, and I shuddered, and lowered my head. But he did not enter me.

"Fuck," he was saying, looking to Lucifer. I'd closed my eyes, bracing my body in anticipation but now opened them. Lucifer was mottled red in the face, leaning forward, looking at us – at Christian, I realized, humiliation written in his expression as he tented his knees upwards.

"I knew it," Christian said triumphantly, releasing his hands from my hips. I heard the rustle of his jeans, then, as I looked down to my feet, saw them drop to the ground behind me. Christina strode off the platform towards Lucifer, magnificently naked, his muscular body cutting through the air like a menacing blade. He paused in front of Lucifer, who seemed frozen in place.

"Look at this," he commanded; Lucifer had screwed his eyes shut. He now opened his eyes to find them directly in line with Christian, and he shook with the proximity of Christian's body to his.

"Lucifer. On your knees."

Lucifer obeyed. He swallowed, and keeping his eyes downcast, slowly straightened himself; he paused before his torso pulled into alignment with his hips, shielding his lower body with his arms.

"Lucifer," Christian crooned, as though seducing him. "Stand up. Stand up straight."

Lucifer's eyes streaked with tears, and I felt a pang of sympathy for the cruel man, in spite of what he'd done to me, that he'd said he only desired to have me killed by my husband. I wanted to call out to Christian that this was enough, that there was no need to torture him, that we should leave the room, that whatever was the matter with him, Christian was only making it worse. But I was silent, and Lucifer sobbed, as Christian surveyed the bulge in his pants, comparing it with the measure of his own tumescent phallus, which he continued to hover in front of Lucifer's field of vision. Lucifer cried, but could not look away.

"I see how it is," Christian said. "But is that all it is? Take off your clothes, Lucifer."

Lucifer stripped himself slowly. He looked as though he wished for the earth to swallow him whole. As he pulled down his underwear, he trembled and cried. His lean, lithe body was bent over in shame. I looked at him and I was revolted. It was a cruel parody of my imagined scene where he watched Christian and I love each other; Christian, now wild with power, standing proudly over the discovered intruder, who cowered in humiliation, crying at the way his weak body betrayed his own turpitude.

"Come," said Christian softly, gesturing forward. With horror, I realized that they were walking towards me. Lucifer looked on in disbelief as they both stood at the edge of the platform.

"Tell me what you want," said Christian softly. "Is it her?" He shoved Lucifer behind me, and I screamed, horrified. Surely, he wasn't going to make this man rape me. Lucifer's hands didn't touch me. A minute passed as I clenched my eyes shut and braced my body, weeping. I heard Christian laugh behind me as he watched.

"No?" Christian's voice was mocking. "No, I can see that's not it for you. How about this?"

I turned my head to see. Christian grasped Lucifer's hand. He cupped Lucifer's palm against his own length. At this contact of Christian's flesh against his own, Lucifer shuddered; he jerked his arm away, wiping his hand against his own body, visibly disgusted, and stepped backwards in shame.

"No?" said Christian. "Well, I'm not convinced, but I'll believe you don't know yourself whether you really like that, either. How about we go back to where we started, then – how about this?"

He moved Lucifer aside, then, stepping forward, I felt him position himself against me once again. I stifled a whimper. This nightmare could not be happening. This monster could not be who I married; this vile man could not be who gained satisfaction from our coupling, though his body, in front of my very eyes as I turned to look at him, betrayed him. He gathered his swelling flesh in his hands as it surged upwards, standing right next to us as Christian stared back at him dominantly.

"Yes," said Christian. "Yes, I see. Anastasia?" he said, softly. "I think this man should know, after all, that you're really mine, and not his. I want to see, for my own sake, before I take him away from here, how much he'd enjoy watching that one last time."

I closed my eyes, not wanting to look. Waiting for this to begin took an eternity. Christian didn't move from where he hesitated between my legs. I could feel him repetitively stroking himself as I clung to the post to which I was chained, as though to the mast of a ship, sailing towards nothing but my own destruction. I wished I could hurry it along. It was fixed in place, and we were locked into the suspension of my immanent pain, Christian poised and ready to violate my body, and Lucifer's consuming gaze.

The apartment intercom crackled to life, and Christian froze against me; he clutched my ribs so fiercely that I had to stop myself from crying out.

"Pardon the interruption," intoned a voice on the intercom. "I have a three-person team here answering a call for emergency clean-up of the room you are currently occupying. They insist it's quite urgent."

Christian dug his thumbs into my flesh, and I writhed in agony. "No one placed a fucking call," he yelled towards the speaker. "It's a practical joke or something. Turn them away."

The intercom sparked again. "They have the security codes," he announced. "All of them."

Christian exhaled behind me. "Anastasia?" he said ominously, his breath hot against my hair. "Did you call for someone?"

"They are very insistent," the man on the intercom said. In my distress, I hadn't realized who must be speaking. Luke, I realized. It was Luke. "They tell me that if I don't let them in here within the next five minutes, they have reasonable cause to suspect someone in that room is in physical danger and they will alert the police. I need to hear from Anastasia."

"Anastasia," Christian repeated softly, stepping away from me. "Anastasia, tell Luke that you're fine."

I said nothing. I willed my lips to move, but I couldn't find the words in my mouth. I seemed emptied of everything, including the capacity to arrange my thoughts into speech.

"Ana," the intercom buzzed, this time with a female voice I recognized. "Please give us a sign that you're there, and that you're all right."

It was her voice which jolted me out of my delirium, her voice which brought me back to myself. "HELP ME!" I screamed.

Christian cursed, then and staggered away from me. He approached the post, and his shaking hands wrestled with the knot which affixed me to the stand. He yanked it free, then he gently lowered me to the ground by my bound arms. "Fuck, Anastasia," he said, hissing at me, frantically searching the room for something – probably for the knife, I realized, hopefully to cut me free, and not to do worse. "You're going to regret this." I buried my face in my arms, my limbs still bound together, and said nothing.

"You see," taunted Lucifer. "You see? She never loved you. I was right."

I heard, but did not see, Christian lunge for him, and he cried out again. Then I head the sliding sound of a drawer wrenched open, a metallic clatter as its contents were tossed out, and frantic footsteps. I lifted my head to see Christian rushing towards me, blade in hand.

"ANA!" screamed a voice at the doorway. "OH MY GOD."

Athena moved faster than I thought possible. Though Christian was ten paces away from me and she was at the other end of the room, she beat him to my side, the brilliant scarlet of her clothing blinding as a flame as she flew towards me.

Christian caught up with her, and I saw his feet enter my field of vision. He lowered the blade towards the ropes, but Athena's hands flashed in front of my eyes as she seized his wrists and thrust him aside. The blade clattered across the floor, and Christian grabbed his own arm as though his flesh stung at her touch. Then he dropped to his knees by my head and words were pouring out of his mouth. In Athena's presence, it was as though I couldn't hear them properly anymore. They were the same words he always said, about our love, about how no one else understood us, asking me to tell the truth, didn't I owe him that much at least? "Please, Ana," he begged, kneeling by me. He reached out his empty arms in beseechment. "You said you still loved me."

"Don't you think you've done enough harm?" Athena's voice was laced with anger. "Leave her alone. You did this to her. And Jesus Christ, put on some fucking pants."

* * *

 _1 To the reddit commenter who told me my "dark feminine nature" corrupted me and made it impossible for me to see the truth of reality, I commend you- what a powerful and poetic idea this is. Why did you delete your comment, though?_


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**No chapter-specific warnings! This one's SFW, too.**

 **FOURTEEN**

* * *

In the cool dawn light of the early morning, I lay in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, which beeped along placidly. Athena was reading a magazine by my bedside. She saw I'd awoken, and smiled at me. "Good morning," she greeted me. "Did you manage any rest?"

"I think so," I said, yawning. "Did you get any sleep, yourself?" I asked her. Oddly, I was certain she'd been sitting in the same chair since I'd been admitted, all night long, in fact, well past the hospital visiting hours, though I must have been imagining this in my overwrought mental state.

"Of course I did," she said cheerily. "I crashed in the lobby for a bit. The staff were nice, and let me stay – they don't usually do that, but they made an exception. Maybe the cleaners were fooled by my outfit into thinking I was a stray from some other job, just needing a bit of rest. You must have been dreaming about me, I think, if you imagined I was here. I told you to think of nice things, so you wouldn't have nightmares, and I'm so happy that seemed to work. And I don't need much sleep anyway."

"Why haven't you gone home?" I asked her. "I would have been fine for a few hours. Don't you need a shower and some breakfast?" Athena's hair still hung beautifully wavy down her back, and her grey eyes still sparkled with life, despite the four hours or so of uncomfortable rest in a public space she must have endured. She didn't even smell bad, despite the stress of the previous night.

"I wanted to be there when you woke up, to see how you were doing," she said lightly. "I'll get us some food right away. Are you all right, you know, all things considered?" she asked, her brow creasing in concern, and she moved over to sit at the edge of my bed, resting a cool hand on my arm. "Have you spoken to anyone yet?"

"Just the night nurse, a few times, after the doctors left," I replied. "I must have been hallucinating you there by my bedside, because I recall telling her on multiple occasions that I was fine, with my friend here to help protect me, and she just smiled at me."

"Ah," laughed Athena. "Well, I'm glad my imagined presence was so calming to you."

"Where did you get those clothes?" I asked, frowning. She was still wearing what she'd worn when she'd rescued me, which I could now see were scarlet hospital scrubs.

"Oh, they're costumes for a show we did awhile ago," said Athena. "A couple of years ago, we had this idea for a cleaning service that rolls up and improbably saves the day in a play, an in-joke for us theater nerds. Last night, after you called the crisis line, I was pretty sure I would need some kind of plan in case things went sideways. And you texted well before ten, as if something had made you regret your call to me, and then you didn't respond to a single follow-up text, and you left me a message that ended up with your husband yelling at you and you hanging up while denying you were calling anyone. I was concerned, but I thought I should be sure before I called the police, that I had something to report instead of wasting their time. So, I phoned a couple of my friends, trying to get some muscle to help me bust into your place, and cook up a plausible excuse for why we might need to roll in as a group of three people instead of one person."

"What?" I said. "Why didn't you just tell my security that you were my friend, visiting me? You still had the codes."

"I didn't want to go in there alone," said Athena. "Christian is an intimidating dude, what with his kickboxing bullshit he's always talking about in the press, as if he couldn't wait to be given the excuse to murder someone for laughs. So, I brought backup, which presented an additional problem, because how did I explain why I was bringing two other people with me you didn't know?"

"Right," I said. "Still, I don't know why Luke allowed you to waltz into the apartment because you claimed you were the cleaners, when he knows the real cleaners we hire. It would be the first time in five years he's done such a poor job of screening intruders."

"Luke knows about your BDSM thing, which is what I gambled upon," said Athena. "I convinced him that the need for utter secrecy was paramount given the sensitive nature of the room in question, and this is why he'd never heard about us before. I told him it was an emergency of a delicate kind, and that you'd asked us to be discreet about what we were doing. We were all wearing our cleaning service costumes, and we came equipped with every single supply we could gather from my apartment, plus some mops and other things my friend had in the back of his van from his day-job. We kept ourselves in character, and I did the talking."

"And that actually worked, and Luke let you in," I said, bewildered, sinking back into the pillow. "It's unbelievable. You honestly must have bewitched him, to let you do that. And _cleaning supplies_ were what you brought for self-defense? I can't believe you would have gone after Christian with a mop in hand."

"I know," she said, laughing. "It's ridiculous. But here we are, thankfully."

"What's that logo printed on the front of your shirt?" I asked, squinting to read it.

"Oh," she said, seemingly embarrassed, plucking at it with her fingers, which obscured what it said. "Well, I guess, come to think of it, it seems a little on the nose, in this circumstance. It wasn't for _you_ that we made our fake cleaning company slogan, keep in mind. Honestly, I was hoping that we'd show up, and that you'd be fine, that I'd have misread the situation, and we'd have a good laugh over the joke – it would have been a great icebreaker, if you weren't, you know…" and here she gestured to the bandages and needles which festooned my body.

"But what does it say?" I asked. Never, in any of our interactions, had she displayed a moment's hesitation over the most outrageous thought or idea. So why was she stalling now?

Athena sighed at me with a smile, then slowly stood and turned around to display the words, emblazoned on her back, in comically large letters. "We asked them to make the silkscreen for the last row," she said, as I read the slogan. "The Deus Ex Machina cleaning service."


	16. Chapter Fifteen

_**NSFW. Profanity and graphic sexual language.**_

 **FIFTEEN**

* * *

Athena and I were exiting the courtroom arm-in-arm late on a cold, dark winter afternoon, a year after the events in the torture-chamber I used to call the Playroom. The second week of Christian's trial for domestic assault had just commenced. I'd made it through my own four days of testimony thanks to Athena's support, and she'd delivered a blistering witness statement about her role in my rescue, which my lawyers were sure would go down well with the jury.

Today had been Lucifer's first day of cross-examination. My effort to press charges against him had fallen through months ago. And, as my lawyers built my case against Christian, Lucifer had agreed to testify, unbelievably, on _my_ behalf. My lawyers had insisted on his taking the witness stand, though I'd been furious at this arrangement. I'd pointed out that Lucifer had incited Christian to kill me repeatedly. The lawyers had sighed, and let me know that while they understood why I loathed him, Lucifer's testimony was important to our case. Lucifer had been previously trying to build a countersuit against me, my lawyers reminded me, for coercing him to share his writing with me when I was in a position of power over him. They pointed out that I'd willingly engaged in discussions of an erotic nature with him, and I made myself vulnerable in this trial if I didn't accept Lucifer's testimony reinforcing my innocence. I wanted to prove I was not a willful conspirator with Christian in his acts of sexual violence, but a victim, and if Lucifer didn't want to press his own charges against me, I should take his offer, they encouraged.

Lucifer's own lawyers argued that he had distracted from Christian's punishment of me, taking my lashes himself, preventing Christian from hurting me further by diverting his attentions. Lucifer had claimed in his testimony today that he had hidden himself in the cabinet to save me, should the need arise, referencing the recordings where he'd claimed he'd do just that, calling himself my "knight in shining codpiece." I'd always known he was joking, even at the time he made the comment, but his lawyers seemed willing to spin it into a truthful intention. And, of course, Lucifer was using the incident where Christian had very thoroughly explored the nature of Lucifer's own desires as an instance of his boss perpetrating sexual abuse on the job.

Lucifer wasn't objectively wrong, I realized. Christian had sexually humiliated him, forced him to strip his clothing, and incited him to perform sex acts on me and on himself. It was truly monstrous, and Christian would pay for this. However, Lucifer's own successful duplicity revolted me. To my lawyers, I pointed out that Lucifer had initially encouraged Christian in his violence against me, making my fictional story into a serious declaration of my own infidelity rather than a fanciful tale completely removed from reality. It disgusted me to think of Lucifer now obtaining _damages_ after five years of feeding and funding his voyeuristic fetish on Christian's payroll. After the trial, I planned to bring forward a restraining order against Lucifer to replace the temporary one which prevented us from contact outside the courtroom, though it still burned me that aside from this, he might get out of the case without a single black mark against his own name. It seemed completely unjust.

"God," gasped Athena, supporting my back as she hustled me towards the car; the four extra bodyguards I'd hired swarmed ahead and behind, holding off the clamouring crowd. "I won't miss this insanity, when it's over." A reporter forced his way between the two lead guards, directly in my path, and shoved a microphone in my face. Athena met his gaze, and the question he was asking choked in his mouth; he lowered his hand, and moved aside on his own. I wondered what she'd done to make him react this way, but her face, when I looked at it, didn't wear a terrifying expression. It was simply resolute.

I remembered what my sister-in-law Katherine had advised, that it would be a matter of surviving the crowd around the courtroom, and that it was important that I played my role well for the cameras. I could weep sadly, but without grotesquely contorting my face; I should avoid any expression of triumph until the end; most of all, I should cultivate a thousand-yard stare of measured stoicism that suggested one day, I would, like a phoenix from the ashes, rise above it all. I tried to avoid looking at photos of myself in newspapers, but Katherine assured me it was going perfectly, and that calculatedly playing the role of the victim was not duplicitous. It was meant to give me the most sympathetic press coverage in the public eye, which I would need to rebuild my life after my divorce from Christian.

I couldn't wait to commiserate with her tonight. She had been a valuable source of guidance for me during the past year, and she was one of the first people I called in the hospital to tell them I'd left Christian, immediately after I told my own mother. Though she was a reporter, she'd recused herself from any involvement with the trial because of her friendship with me. So far, not a word of what I told her had leaked to the press.

"I wish Katherine were here, just to help me handle these bozos," grumbled Athena in my ear, as if reading my mind. "I know they have to be this way, but damn, if it doesn't feel personal. I can't wait to pick her brain about how the press will run with what they learned today."

I squeezed through the human passageway created by the guards. As I approached the car, I could hear a mechanical click, through the din, as Luke unlocked the doors. I stepped into the Veron, hustling to the far side of the vehicle, while Athena pressed in after me.

"Thanks, Luke," she smiled at him, after she'd slammed the door shut. He'd clicked the locks closed the very next second. "Right in the nick of time, as per usual." I looked in the rearview mirror to see our guards hustle into the second car we'd hired. Luke's eyes caught mine in the reflection. He smiled sympathetically at me, then turned his gaze towards Athena.

"You should sit down for a drink with us, when we get to Ana's apartment," she said, grinning at him in the mirror. "You deserve a reward for waiting around for us."

"It was no trouble at all, miss," he returned. "While you were in the courthouse I ran some errands. I did some Christmas shopping for my wife."

"Aww," Athena beamed at him. "Isn't it good, to see someone being a nice husband?" she asked me.

"Yes," I sighed. "Luke is a paragon of virtue, now and always. There's no one I trust more after all he's been through with me. But I don't know that I'll trust another man ever again. Did you hear Lucifer, what he said at the end of his cross examination today? I swear that was meant for me, to taunt me."

"What did he say?" asked Athena. "I mean, besides all the bullshit about how he doesn't hate you, which we know isn't true."

"He said, when they asked about why he tried to pit Christian against me, 'They ruined my life, and I had the power to bring them down. They were stupid to trust me. And because they both trusted me, I turned that against them. And it was easy. In a few words, which were true, Christian was going to beat her to death. And in a few other words, he was willing to hurt me, though I was just the messenger. I'm smarter than them, and I made them pay for it, and now they have nothing at all.'"

"Ugh," said Athena. "For fuck's sake. As if you have nothing at all, besides so many millions of Christian's dollars in alimony that you never have to worry about affording anything ever again. I can't believe you'd _want_ to remember what he said. Did you bring along a transcription, or what? That's disturbing, that you memorized all that."

"I have perfect recall, unfortunately, where Lucifer is concerned," I said, shaking my head. "It's like I was blind to how he really was, and now that I see it, I need to remember everything about it, to protect myself so it never happens again."

"I'm sorry," said Athena, setting her lips into a grim line of displeasure. "It's truly shitty you have to re-live this all over again every day of this trial."

"I know," I sighed. "It's torture. But there's no other way."

"That Lucifer," exclaimed Athena, shaking her head. Every day post-trial had been filled with a new rant about his character, which I was only too happy to indulge. "He really does live up to his name, doesn't he? I mean, it WAS devilishly cunning, to set up Christian like that, to entice Christian to abuse him while on the job, and in such a way that he didn't consent to it, though he was obviously in it to indulge his fetish."

"I know," I mused. "As if one could ever consent to being whipped, though, in a place of work! Or to any of the depraved things Christian did. Christian approaches all of life like a dominant. He doesn't see boundaries anywhere, and it leads to foolishness. It was a huge abuse of power. And Lucifer recorded everything - every detail of our conversations. He had his data backing up to the cloud wirelessly, so no matter if Christian smashed every single device we owned, the content would still be there. I guess I do have to be oddly grateful to him, or else this would be based on a lot of hearsay."

"Those conversations of yours with Lucifer, though, were uncomfortable," said Athena. "And just fucking WEIRD. Like, I have NO idea how you managed to keep a straight face when he read his porno stories to you. You must have been dying with laughter inside. They were the most bizarre thing I've ever heard."

"Well," I said, swallowing at this indictment of my own poor taste in erotica, "I am a professional. I'm paid to hear people's ideas and take them seriously, even if they are – you know. A little crazy."

"What was that line again?" Athena furrowed her forehead, trying to remember it. "The poets could never penetrate the mystery of his whatever, tentpole metaphor, motherfucking _Pythagoras_ , then Schrodinger's cock, both erect and not erect at the same time, you won't know until you unzip his pants?" she giggled.

"Heisenberg," I said, failing to suppress my own laughter. "I had to look up that one after the fact, I admit. You might call it the Heisenberg uncertainty penis – where you can't measure its position and the velocity of its thrusts at the same time, I guess."

"Oh my God," howled Athena. "That was something. And that other story! That man, in the woods! No, the TWO men in the woods! Some creeper watching the half-naked beast man in secret, eyes _right_ at dick level, to start out with. Tell me that isn't fucked up. And then the imagery! The _dappled light_ of the forest, illuminating his monster cock, his glans glowing like a magical orb when women are near it," she laughed, her face incredulous. "And then the man, like, stumbles his enchanted dick towards a woman who's kneeling with her cunt facing him, and he leans his head back and howls like a wolf! And he just pounds her, grunting, like he's a fucking animal. It's most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my entire life!"

"When you put it that way," I said, joining in her laughter. "You're right – it makes no sense whatsoever! But it's too bad, really. His over-laboured writing, that is. With a bit of guidance, I think he could have really had something worth reading."

"A _bit_ of guidance," scoffed Athena. "Try a personality replacement. He's vile. I can't believe you still think there's anything redeeming whatsoever about anything he had to say."

"You're probably right," I sighed. "I guess I've always been too soft-hearted, and not the best judge of character."

"You know better now," said Athena, patting my hand. "And now you're free of both of them."

Luke's expression, when I glanced towards the rearview mirror, resembled the face of a man who had just witnessed a ten-car pileup. I'd almost forgotten he was listening, and was embarrassed by our indiscretion.

"Sorry, Luke," I called to him. "That was a little vulgar of us."

"It's all right, miss," he sighed. "I've certainly seen and heard much worse."

"I'm sorry for that, too," I replied. Luke smiled, and kept silent.

"It's odd, though, how Lucifer kept saying in the trial that he was just lonely, and wanted a girlfriend," Athena mused. "He obviously didn't want any woman who exists here on earth. You were certainly generous with trying to help him, and in the end, you couldn't, because he didn't want to be helped."

"Yes," I nodded. "You're right. Back then, I wanted to think that he couldn't possibly mean the things he said, and that he just needed someone to show him compassion. But I think if the kindest, gentlest, purest woman in the world had approached him, he would have taken her own attraction as proof of her depravity. He constructed a world he wanted to see, and he made it true."

"And he got his wish, in the end, to destroy your relationship, even if he didn't have you killed," said Athena. "Though that was really Christian's fault, the human shitstain."

"You know," I sighed, "If it weren't for all the therapy I've been through in the past year, I don't think I could bear to hear that word used to describe Christian – but you're right. And good riddance."

Athena laughed, then her face turned serious. "Ana," she said, quietly, in that intent tone of voice she used when she wanted to persuade me of something. "Now that you're free of all this bullshit from abusive men, why don't you try to, you know, process some of what you went through, besides what you're doing in therapy – write it down, or something?"

"No," I countered, sighing. This wasn't the first time Athena had suggested this, and, as I'd told her before, it felt as though I had no perspective from which to write about this, because I was still re-living these very experiences in pursuit of justice for them. "It's still too close to home."

"I understand," she replied, nodding. "I'm sorry I keep bringing it up. Someday, though, I think it would be helpful. I mean, I don't want to force this on you or anything, but it has this weird similarity with my story pitch, back in the day, and it's been turning around in my head for a year now."

"What do you mean?" I said. "You don't mean Ovid, and Diana, and the hunter and the hounds?"

"I do," she said. "God, if this hurts you to think about the similarities, I'll never forgive myself."

"No, go on," I said, perplexed. "I want to know what on earth you see of resemblance between that story and my personal life."

"I won't belabour the parallels," she said, slowly. "You don't need the associations to know how it was to live through a situation in which you were almost destroyed by two opposing forces. I just want to talk about the moral of the thing. What was that line in his testimony that Lucifer said about you? Your 'dark feminine nature.' I mean, that was an amazing line, wasn't it?"

"It was a slap in the face," I said; it was agonizing for me to recall. "I don't want to use his words to define me. And how on earth is _that_ the moral?"

"And they _don't_ define you," she said, reaching out to me in reassurance. "I'm doing a terrible job of pitching this to you. I mean, what else is new, right? But it's that feminine nature – those things you said about yourself in the trial, about not trusting your own eyes, about not believing what your senses showed you to be true. That's the 'dark feminine nature' that Lucifer and even Christian were afraid of, and that's what they tried to suppress for so long, gaslighting you, into thinking their lies were truth, that they could tell you how to perceive and how to feel."

"Hmm," I said, musing on her words. "You mean like I was ignoring my own… woman's intuition, or something?"

"God no," said Athena, sighing. "Fucking _women's intuition._ Things were literally and not metaphorically happening which you ignored because you were so used to believing you were wrong, thanks to these men who convinced you they knew better that what you knew through your own eyes. So first of all, I mean trusting your literal senses to know the world as it is. But beyond that, I mean, like, witchy power. The power to know things only a woman knows about herself and her desires. The power to have secrets, the power to, I don't know, conceal sacred things in one's own body."

"Athena," I protested, perturbed. "Luke is still listening to all of this."

"We'll make it a double shot, Luke!" Athena chirped towards the back of Luke's head. "You deserve it, buddy. Anyway. Because women are dark and mysterious to men who desire them without knowing them, they don't properly see _any_ woman whatsoever. I mean, think of how many words Mr. Antichrist spent on detailing Christian's dick, and you were described with about as much personality and attention as a glory hole."

"Athena!" I gasped. Luke gave me a sympathetic glance as he pressed the power button on the sliding partition between the driver's area and the back of the car.

"WE LOVE YOU, LUKE!" yelled Athena, pressing her nose to the glass. "God, I'm sorry, Ana. What I mean to say is that it wouldn't be a bad exercise to get to know yourself a little better. No," she interrupted herself, seeing my expression. "I don't mean to go stare at your own cunt in a mirror, or something, but I've known you for a year now, and you're a sweet person, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I think to myself, who the fuck _are_ you? You're like this beautiful blank slate sometimes. And no," here she reached out to me again, seeing the hurt written all over my face, "I don't mean to say that you don't have a personality, because you _do_ , and it's coming back to you, slowly, I think, without those dicks in your life holding you down. But if you're not Christian's wife, and if you're not defined by him anymore, who are you? Who ARE you, besides a pretty face? I've never heard you talk about that, about what you want, about how you see yourself, about what you desire that isn't just a byproduct of someone else's desire."

I was silent as I contemplated this. When had I ever spoken with her about desire? I wondered. I hadn't ever shared my own writing with her. Perhaps she was recalling it in excerpts from the trial, though my own story had been glossed over for the more salacious details of Lucifer's texts. I'd not been in the mood for dating in the past year, and I started to shape a protest along these lines. But her words about my lack of self-knowledge struck my heart, and I wondered if it were a lucky guess on her behalf, or whether her words held truthful insight.

The darkness had fallen, and as we passed under the streetlamps, I could see my own reflection in the window, shimmering against the black fabric of the surrounding cityscape. As we sped through layered overpasses and offramps, I stared at my features reflected in the curve of the car window as though I myself were duplicated: one face safe and enclosed in the space of the car, the other on the outside, a mirror image of myself who watched me silently as she flew through the night. It had been a long time, I thought, since I'd considered my own reflection without thinking of Christian's words repeating his own desire back to me. When I woke from my dreams, sometimes I still heard his words for my body echoing in my own ears. That voice was gone. It was only me, now, echoing it back to myself.

I considered my own hands: narrow wrists, slender fingers, delicate and supple, which could have danced across the bridge of a violin or sewn a faulty artery back into place within a man's failing heart. I considered the paleness of my reflection, the way my collarbones protruded below the slender curves of my neck; the way my body moved with my breaths, as though I were anticipating another's movements, ready to bow and sway in acquiescence with their desires. I swallowed, and I saw my lips purse sensitively and expressively as I stared at my own reflection. Why had I not seen this? I thought to myself. Why had I only seen him?

"You see?" said Athena. She smiled, and we were plunged into darkness beneath a looming overpass. Her features were obliterated; she was a shadow, a shape surpassing the limits of her slight body, which seemed looming and impenetrable as a fortress. She peered back at me as though her face were shielded by armour, her eyes returning my gaze the only bright spots gleaming through the blackness. I blinked, and the illusion was broken: the streetlights once again illuminated her where she sat, a slight girl whose complete ordinariness belied the way she stared at me with preternatural wisdom. It was though I'd never seen her smile before, as though I'd never known her at all, because I realized in this moment that I had no more knowledge of who she was than of my own inarticulate desires. I gasped with the shock. I hadn't seen anything at all, I realized, though I'd stared this in the face the whole time. She repeated the question, though she knew the answer.

"Do you see?"


End file.
